675 Quotes by Dalai Lama XIV

Water may be extremely dirty, yet its nature remains clear.

For a teacher to be productive and effective in the process of teaching, compassion, or a kind heart, is explained here as the most crucial quality. There are other defects in teaching, for example being tired of explaining to the students. So being tolerant and patient in the face of such difficulties is also important.

We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences.

True change is within; leave the outside as it is.

Ultimately humanity is one, and this small planet is our only home. If we're to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism and compassion.

According to the theory of emptiness, any belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent existence is untenable. All things and events, whether material, mental, or even abstract concepts like time, are devoid of objective independent existence. To possess such independent, intrinsic existence would imply that things and events are somehow complete unto themselves and are therefore entirely contained.

[W]e will never solve our problems simply by instituting new laws and regulations. Ultimately, the source of our problems lies at the level of the individual.

Science, for all the benefits it has brought to our external world, has not yet provided scientific grounding for the development of the foundations of personal integrity—the basic inner human values that we appreciate in others and would do well to promote in ourselves.

But for all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, in today's secular world religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. [...] Today, [...] any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate. What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics.