The Mind's Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J Davidson, Zara Houshmand

"Mental health is not simply the absence of mental illness." Matthieu Richard

"If we're unwise, then most often the only way we know how to deal with pain is to escape from it through absorbing the mind into something pleasurable, which leads to the blind pursuit of sensory pleasure.  Yet that contributes to a greater sense of stress and dislocation." Ajahn Amaro

Stopping and opening one's field of awareness is, ultimately, a radical act of self-compassion and wisdom. 

"The fulfillment of one's aspiration for happiness really lies in the transformation of one's undisciplined state to a more disciplined state of mind". Dalai Lama

"There's an enormous emphasis in Buddhism on creating community.  It is said that on one occasion the Buddha's attendant Ananda, being very impressed by the importance of community for one's own individual spiritual practice, said, "Lord, it seems like half the practice is sangha" (sangha being the community).  And Buddha responded, "Say not so, Ananda.  The sangha is the whole of the practice".  Alan Wallace

"People are stuck in suffering and can't move on to the good news that there's relief from suffering". Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"The Buddhist psychological training, or treatment, if you will, shifts us from what is suboptimal -- the entanglement in confusion, addiction, rigidity, and so forth -- toward what is normal, with a greater increase of healthy states and, finally, to extraordinary mental health, well-being, and inner freedom". Jack Kornfield

"We're not designed as an organism to take in the suffering of the whole world." Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"The antidote of media fasting could be a very powerful treatment for our mental health, collectively and individually." Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"Meditation is full of mistakes, heartaches, and boring moments, and the feeling of getting nowhere.  It's doing it every day, preferably twice a day, that makes all the difference.  Then it becomes a divine therapy that does two things.  It spontaneously affirms our basic goodness, hence addressing the whole panorama of low self-esteem that is epidemic in Western culture.  The other thing meditation addresses is the unconsciousness and all the repressed emotional junk of a lifetime.  That repressed material is warehoused in the body and causes all kinds of problems." Father Keating

"The greatest step toward happiness that we can make is to recognize that happiness and pleasure are not the same thing."  Father Keating

"Heedlessness is thought to be one of the core conditions that give rise to all sorts of destructive behavior".  Dalai Lama

"The starting point of Buddhism is really the nature of reality and the fact of one's existence, the human condition". Dalai Lama

"The problems of mind are very complex, so the antidote also must be comprehensive.  Mindfulness is just one part of that." Dalai Lama

"Many problems are essentially due to ignorance.  Ignorance brings with it an unrealistic attitude and unrealistic attitude brings a lot of mental problems.  Accept reality, and approach it more realistically." Dalai Lama

Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science & Buddhism with Zara Houshmand, Robert B Livingston and B Alan Wallace

All quotes from Zara, Alan, and Robert's book

"The brain as a whole tends to the best it can by integrating all of its resources that are available". Robert B Livingston

"According to Buddhist theory, there are some things that belong to subtle consciousness, or subtle mind, that are independent from the body, from the brain.  There's no assertion in Buddhism that there is a thing called a soul or a thing called consciousness, something that exists independently of the brain.  There is no such thing existing independently of the brain or being dependent upon the brain.  But rather, consciousness is understood as a multifaceted matrix of events".  Dalai Lama

"When someone builds a house to live in, you have to have a plan.  And on the basis of that plan you build the house, and then later you can live in it. In the same manner, sentient beings who produced the evolution of this present universe made this plan, but not necessarily consciously, by leaving karmic imprints within their subtle mental consciousness, which later, when activated, made it possible to influence the formation of this universe".  Thubten Jinpa

"Although the world is put together for us in consciousness, it is assembled from a distributed, analytical, decision-making apparatus which has a surprisingly marvelous gross, microscopic, and ultrastructural architecture". Antonio R Damasio

"When death occurs suddenly, if one is in perfect health, one's memories still remain very sharp".  Dalai Lama

"The newborn infant has about four times as much dream-state sleeping as the adult does".  Allan Hobson

"The five elements are the elements of earth, water, fire, air, and consciousness.  Bear in mind, "earth" doesn't mean dirt, it refers to the solid constituents of the body; water to the fluid constituents".  Dalai Lama

"When you have the very subtle consciousness that one is supposed to have just before death, that really does not mean that you have heightened, greater awareness, but rather the contrary. It means that in fact you are reducing perception to very low levels".  Antonio Damasio

"The fewer the examples, the stronger the evidence must be".  Allan Hobson

"Even in Buddhism there is no notion of a self-sufficient, self-supporting "I", self, soul, or ego.  This is thoroughly refuted. Buddhists do assert the existence of awareness, but to use the term soul in a Buddhist context is misleading, because Buddhists don't use the term and by and large refute the existence of a soul".  Dalai Lama

"As a result of scientific investigations, we have more less refuted the notion of a truly existent self. You can't find a soul, or a human being.  You can find the human body, but you can't find the human being per se, the person qua person, the entity for which we feel compassion and affection".  Dalai Lama

"The absence of an intrinsic self is emptiness, and emptiness is something to be realized.  It is not designed to reintroduce a soul".  Dalai Lama

"I always believe that each individual human being has some kind of responsibility for humanity as a whole". Dalai Lama

"According to the Buddhist view… consciousness is simply of the nature of luminosity and cognizance, much as fire is of the nature of heat". B Alan Wallace