As for the law of moral causation ('karma'): this is human justice dressed up as cosmic justice and then imputed to the impersonal workings of the natural world.

The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in our distorted conceptions of the world.

Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.

While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.

What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.

The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.

This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.

Seek joyfulness when you can, for seeking joy leads to an auspicious atmosphere.

I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.

From compassion springs humility. The ego is verily a gateway to hell. The person who is egoistic is far from being religious.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

What goes unnamed remains hard to correct.

You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

I was once in a long relationship with a man who ran a vintage clothes store but had been a chef, so I'd come home each night to a different three-course meal. I was quite fat, but so happy.

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

This is about saving children's lives. It is not about agencies and services protecting themselves.

I always had a fantasy of meeting a girl who was as serious as I was.