How can we speak about "drugs"? It is like speaking about the human race - each person is different, each drug is different!
The situation with children is not good in America, nor in other countries. It may be much worse in other countries. It is not just because of the lack of money. It is the lack of the awareness that children are very open, smart and knowing people when they are still very little. Afterwards they close down. Then they become like everyone and we have to work again to open up.
There is danger in everything that we do.
Ignorance, according to the Buddha, is our basic difficulty. Psychedelics and the process of aging make that clear to me all the time.
I've done a little yoga, not as a professional, and every time I have a good teacher I see the immense possibilities and subtleties in this discipline. It's a little bit like music.
Some people just cannot take certain foods. That's all. People are allergic. Some people are allergic to orange juice, can you imagine? Orange juice is very healthy isn't it? Yet some people cannot drink it without having an allergic reaction.
I have seen several deaths, too many deaths in my life, and they were all different. Each one was different. It didn't seem to be necessarily connected with the life of the person. Some people that were not particularly developed or outstanding or spiritual died very easily. Some other people were on a very high level and had a difficult time in dying.
I would much rather sit on the floor. Very rarely do I find a table and a chair that is comfortable. But the floor is comfortable.
I would tell to young people to sit on their heels. Children do that naturally so if they never had furniture they would do it. It's wonderful for all parts of the body.
Age teaches us how to be more aware of other people's feelings.
Alcohol is certainly one of the most abused drugs since ever and ever, since Dionysus. They say have a glass of wine at dinner, which was done in the Latin countries. In Italy we always had a glass of wine at dinner. It is a good thing. But if you have dozens of glasses of wine at dinner it is not so good.
Psychedelics are extraordinary tools, when used with psychotherapy, because in one day you can let go of so much, and have insight into so much. Sometimes more than in a year of traditional psychotherapy. I think they should be used in psychotherapy. But I don't know who should be entrusted with the toolbox - priests or psychiatrists? That is the difficulty.
The unequal distribution of food is one of the world's most tragic facts. Millions of people die because they have too little to eat, and many die because they have too much.
Toddlers are so powerful and so egocentric and teenagers are also so powerful, so egocentric.
Habitual caution ties and binds us; it is as if we were dressed always in clothes and shoes that were several sizes too small.
What I say is focus your mind and respect your body. But mostly love your heart. I think that is where to begin, from there and then it goes out.
Most furniture is not made for people - they are made for the people who sell them.
We are to eat food otherwise we don't live and sometimes we eat food that is very damaging.
They don't consider nicotine as a drug. Why don't they put it together with all the other drugs?
Power is just so much part of the human being because power is survival. But I wonder if that is the best way to survive, by killing someone else.
Everything has to come through the senses, as though the soul is speaking out through the senses.
You make love for the pleasure and the passion and for the love that two people have for each other. But then there is also this other thing. Are we going to make love to have a child? One has to be clear to do that.
Teenagers have to be sustained; they have to be given something to live for and something that involves them without having to make a child, a human being.
Anybody can make a baby without any checking, without thinking. This type of parenting can be tragic because one of the greatest actions a human being can do is to create another life.
The preparation for conception to me is one of the most important things, if we are we interested in the general progress of our species.
