Everything passes, nothing remains. Understand this, loosen your grip and fine serenity.

However, we need to participate and manage skillfully, helpfully, and harmoniously, for a better world, family and society to be possible. So everybody's spiritual by nature I believe, not that they necessarily have to be religious. Everybody wants, or cares about, and has values even if they don't talk about them all the time explicitly, like some noisy preachers do with their foghorn voices and dogmatic views.

The heart is an organ of perception.

The Pearl Principle - no inner irritation, no pearl.

So we have to be ready, willing, and able to really transform ourselves, and each other in the world, not just say it and affirm it, "Oh, I want to change". Intention is important, but so is action.

Well neither of us were "Buddhists" then because it was new to us. We were 60's people. Psychedelic relics, you know... whatever, right on, radicals and world changers, social peaceniks perhaps, with a Buddhist spiritual veneer.

It almost seems as though this roiling world is conspiring to test our patience at every turn. In fact, it is. With this in mind, we would be wise to look on our imperfect environment as a teacher rather than an antagonist. It constantly shows us that we need to be patient on an ongoing basis, not just every now and then, if we´re going to realize true inner peace, happiness, and fulfillment.