If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

The desire to be a free person is very worthwhile. To be free means you are no longer the victim of fear, anger, craving, or suspicion.

Are we treating our body kindly by the way we eat, by the way we drink, by the way we work? Are we treating ourselves with enough joy and tenderness and peace? Or are we feeding ourselves with toxins that we get from the market - the spiritual, intellectual, entertainment market?

Freedom from suffering is a great happiness.

We try many ways to be awake, but our society still keeps us forgetful. Meditation is to help us remember.

The first thing I learned was that even if you have a lot of money and power and fame, you can still suffer very deeply.

One day I saw a picture of the Buddha on a Buddhist magazine and he was sitting on the grass, and he was sitting on the grass, very peaceful, smiling, and I was impressed. Around me people were not like that, so I had the desire to be someone like him. I nourished that kind of desire until the age of sixteen, when I had the permission from my parents to go and ordain as a Buddhist monk.