Children understand that 'once upon a time' refers not only--not even primarily--to the past, but to the impalpable regions of the present, the deeper places inside us where princes and dragons, wizards and talking birds, impassable roads, impossible tasks, and happy endings have always existed, alive and bursting with psychic power.

The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, the whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.

When speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock.

But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.

If you listen to the traffic with a clear mind, without any concepts, it is not noisy, it is only what it is.

Happily ever after doesn't begin with Once upon a time: it begins with Now.

Education is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death.