The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being.

When humanity serves Nature, Nature serves humanity. When we serve animals and plants, they too serve us in return.

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

A human body is associated with six stages of transformation, birth, growth, change, evolution, death and destruction.

If development is the new name for peace, war and preparations for war are the major enemy of the healthy development of peoples. If we take the common good of all humanity as our norm, instead of individual greed, peace would be possible.

Furthermore, because God created it, The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendour and its beauty.

As long as women are bound by poverty and as long as they are looked down upon, human rights will lack substance.

In Paradise there are things which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has thought of.

Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!

It is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.

Belief and disbelief have divided humankind into so many sects, blinding its eyes to the vision of the Oneness of all Life.

Do not surrender your grief so quickly. Let it cut more deeply. Let it ferment and season you as few human or divine ingredients can. Something is missing in my heart tonight that has made my eyes so soft and my voice so tender and my need of God so absolutely clear.

When your body, mind and soul are healthy and harmonious, you will bring health and harmony to the world- not by withdrawing from the world, but by being a healthy, living organ of the body of humanity.

If you take the insults of your fellow human beings personally, you will be offended for the rest of your life.

Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?

The human spirit must transcend number and break through multiplicity, and God will break through him; and just as He

There is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for the young are not produced by reasoning, but by feeling, and this faculty exists not only in humans but in most living beings.

I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It's not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.

If you think that nobody loves you, the problem is that you have not learnt how to love others. Because if you have learnt to love others, you will be satisfied millions of times giving love than looking for it. And when you give love, spontaneously and naturally people reciprocate. People love those who love them. It’s human nature.

The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth.

I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.

Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life.