Quotes from Robert Thurman

Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith. It is an evolutionary goal, something we want to become.

I think humans will find their humanity sometime, somehow.

Hate poisons your life.

The worldly person is insane from the point of view of the spiritual person.

Everyone has the same life purpose, which is the quest of happiness for oneself and for others.

The Buddhists think that, because we've all had infinite previous lives, we've all been each other's relatives. Therefore all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life … have been my mother — for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you.

Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom.

To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality. Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevent subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is.

Anger spoils relationships where there should be great reciprocity.

In the practice of exchanging self & other, paradoxes abound.

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the greatest teachers of our time. He reaches from the heights of insight down to the deepest places of the absolutely ordinary.

It isn't the meaning of love where you somehow desire that one or you want them or want them to love you.

That love, in the sense of wishing their happiness, will cause your actions to be effective in relation to that person.

If you love your enemy, that means you want your enemy to be happy.

Wisdom is tolerance of cognitive dissonance.