The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.

Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.

The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.

Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.