“The Four Noble Truths are pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They suggest a course of action to be followed rather than a set of dogmas to be believed. The four truths are prescriptions for behavior r...”

“We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy one word Zen. When asked What is the highest teaching of the Buddh...”

“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. (65)”

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

“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. (157)”

“I know very little with anything approaching certainty. I know that I was born, that I exist, and that I will die. For the most part, I can trust my brain's interpretation of the data presented to ...”

“There is only one God and all atheists will learn that after their deaths”

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness...”

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most i...”

“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the ri...”

“We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We dont know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and fee...”

“Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if were honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devot...”

“Education doesnt make you happy. Nor does freedom. We dont become happy just because were free if we are. Or because weve been educated if we have. But because education may be the means by which...”

“Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of bei...”

“The past has no power over the present moment.”