Quote collection
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"Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart. The key point is a call for a genuine sense of universal responsibility that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness."
"Nothing is permanent."
"Nothing comes into being without a cause and when all the conditions are created, there is nothing that can prevent the consequence."
"Even without a religion, we can become a good human being."
"I feel that we should not only maintain gentle, peaceful relations with our fellow human beings bur also that is very important to extend the same kind of attitude toward the natural environment."
"Wealth is not necessarily a bad thing when it has been earned in an honest manner and neither other individuals nor the environment suffered for it."
"I am like a wounded animal in a remote isolated place - How wonderful! - How happy!"
"We had a rule in Tibet that anyone proposing a new invention had to guarentee that it was beneficial, or at least harmless, for seven generations of humans before it could be adopted."
"I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend [with dignity, with honor]."
"If the basic human nature was aggressive, we would have been born with animal claws & huge teeth -- but ours are very short, very pretty, very weak! That means we are not well equipped to be aggressive beings. Even the size of our mouth is very small. So I think the basic nature of human beings should be gentle."
"It is... very helpful to think of adversity not so much as a threat to our peace of mind but rather as the very means by which patience is attained."
"To seek solitude like a wild animal. That is my only ambition."
"I believe that the time has come for women to take more active roles in all domains of human society, in an age in which education and the capacities of the mind, not physical strength, define leadership. This could help create a more equitable and compassionate society."
"Misunderstanding may arise by confusing the Buddhist and scientific definitions of death. Within the scientific system you spoke quite validly of the death of the brain and the death of heart. Different parts of the body can die separately. However, in the Buddhist system, the word death is not used in that way. You'd never speak of the death of a particular part of the body, but rather of the death of an entire person. When people say that a certain person died, we don't ask, "Well, which part died?""
"Compassion seems to be the greatest power."
"His Holiness Pope John Paul II was a determined and deeply spiritual minded person for whom I had great respect and admiration. His experience in Poland, then a communist country, and my own difficulties with communists, gave us an immediate common ground"
"All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment."
"Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body."
"My main hope is eventually, in modern education field, introduce education about warm-heartedness, not based on religion, but based on common experience and a common sort of sense, and then scientific finding."
"It is very wrong for people to feel deeply sad when they lose some money, yet when they waste the precious moments of their lives they do not have the slightest feeling of repentance."