Since the only way you are going to find solutions to painful problems is by thinking deeply about them - i.e., reflecting - if you can develop a knee-jerk reaction to pain that is to reflect rather than to fight or flee, it will lead to your rapid learning/evolving.

In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.

With the media, we don't know what's true, and we don't have radical transparency because we're seeing everything through somebody else's eyes. There's no other industry that has as much power and as much freedom and as little quality control. I can't imagine how anyone could not think that's a problem.

For me, the best things in life - meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures - are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money.

I could see that making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and unproductive. So I learned to love real integrity and to despise the lack of it.

I think meditation has been the single biggest reason for whatever success Ive had

Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments from the stands without having played on the field.