Come, live with the doors of the senses guarded, diligent and mindful, vigilant and mindful, with the ways of the mind well watched, possessed of a mind that is awake and observing.
Our problem mostly in our abuse of each other and the planet is greed. Just the rampant, incredible greed that people have partly because they're empty and they can't get enough because they're - you know, it's that Buddhist thing about the hungry ghost with the little mouth and the big belly.
Neither in the sky nor in mid-ocean, nor by entering into mountain clefts, nowhere in the world is there a place where one may escape from the results of evil deeds.
Those who awaken never rest in one place. Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. On the air they rise and fly an invisible course. Their food is knowledge. They live on emptiness. They have seen how to break free. Who can follow them?
The Buddhist tenet, "Non-killing is supreme virtue", is very good, but in trying to enforce it upon all by legislation without paying any heed to the capacities of the people at large, Buddhism has brought ruin upon India.
There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it. To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.
When a monk is an arahant, with his fermentations ended - one who has reached fulfillment, done the task, laid down the burden, attained the true goal, totally destroyed the fetter of becoming, and is released through right gnosis - the thought doesn't occur to him that 'There is someone better than me,' or 'There is someone equal to me,' or 'There is someone worse than me.'
Monks, when ignorance is abandoned, and knowledge arises in the monk, with the ending of ignorance and the arising of knowledge he clings neither to sense-pleasures, nor does he cling to views, nor to precepts and vows, nor to a Self-doctrine. Not clinking, he is not disturbed; not disturbed, he attains individually nibbana.
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.