What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!
If through practice of insight you develop a sense of ease, then time has no relevance. If you're miserable, time does matter. It's so unbearable, so enormous you want to get out of it as soon as possible.
Even while Jerusalem was standing and the Jews were at peace with us, the practice of their sacred rites was at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.
We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from the earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people.
God's justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity. The vague and tenuous hope that God is 'too kind' to punish the ungodly has become deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws everyday nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded. As responsible moral beings, we dare not so trifle with our eternal future.
I don't think there's any question journalists have become targets, but then I think that - that anyone who tries to practice liberty becomes a target of fanatics.
In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time.
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. This is a helpful pointer for our everyday presence-practice. Can you catch yourself angrily defending your point of view or attacking the other person's? There's the ego.