The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

Our entire lives are governed by a voice in our heads. This voice is engaged in a ceaseless stream of thinking—most of it negative, repetitive, and self-referential.

The ego thrives on drama. It keeps our old resentments and grievances alive through compulsive thought.

“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

As best I could understand it, the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.

We suffer because we get attached to people and possessions that ultimately evaporate.

The route to true happiness was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens.

This is where the Buddhists diverged quite dramatically from self-help: They had an actual, practical program. It wasn’t expensive gimcrackery. No spendy seminars, no credit cards required. It was totally free.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it.

We can do more than just think; we also have the power simply to be aware of things—without judgment, without the ego. This is not to denigrate thinking, just to say that thinking without awareness can be a harsh master.

Picture the mind like a waterfall, they said: the water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions; mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall.

RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification

Bingo: respond not react.

Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.”

The real superpower of meditation is not just to manage your ego more mindfully but to see that the ego itself has no actual substance. Close your eyes and look for it, and you won’t find any “self” you can put your finger on.

... ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this useful’?

Our life is the manifestation of our minds.

The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

The brain, it turns out, is constantly changing in response to experience. It’s possible to sculpt your brain through meditation just as you build and tone your body through exercise—to grow your gray matter the way doing curls grows your bicep.

The brain, the organ of experience, through which our entire lives are led, can be trained. Happiness is a skill.

Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else.

Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

“Practice of compassion is ultimately benefit to you. So I usually describe: we are selfish, but be wise selfish rather than foolish selfish.”

This clunky phrase “nonattachment to results” was my long-sought Holy Grail, the middle path, the marriage of “the price of security” and “the wisdom of insecurity.”

1. Don’t Be a Jerk 2. When Necessary, Hide the Zen 3. Meditate 4. The Price of Security Is Insecurity—Until It’s Not Useful 5. Equanimity Is Not the Enemy of Creativity 6. Don’t Force It 7. Humility Prevents Humiliation 8. Go Easy with the Internal Cattle Prod 9. Nonattachment to Results 10. What Matters Most?

Nonattachment to results + self compassion = a supple relentlessness that is hard to match. Push hard, play to win, but don’t assume the fetal position if things don’t go your way.

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

I get embarrassed a lot of times getting attention, but I like being onstage. Do you know what I mean? If I'm in a crowd of people and they're all looking at me, I will feel embarrassed. It's a strange dichotomy.

Being at school, being who I am, being an athlete, it was hard to find people like me. There's not many athletes that can be at my level. That was kind of hard finding people who love something so much they want to keep on doing it.

Of all the unhappiness I went through, you must know I wouldn't live a moment of my life differently for what I have now. Would I do it all again? I wouldn't want to, but if it got me to the same place, yeah, I'd do it. Because I realize now that God would not give more than I could handle.

When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.

I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we fail.

I don't come from a comedy background or a stand-up background, but I think that sometimes there's a misconception that an actor who works primarily in comedy is a comedian. There's nothing wrong with being a comedian, but I'm absolutely not that. I can't think of anything more terrifying than doing stand-up!

When I'm playing the 1-guard, I'm kind of seeing everything that's going on. When I play the 2, I have a more broader understanding of what's going on and where the screens are being set in order for not only myself to get open, but for my teammates.

I preferred sewing to bossing little children.

I give people my heart and my full attention.

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

Who would want a face that hasn't seen or lived properly, hasn't got any wrinkles that come with age, experience and laughter? Not me, anyway.

The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.

On Sunday morning, I'm not nervous... I can't wait to tell what God wants me to say.

If there is no transformation inside of us all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.

In my long and difficult and mature life, I have come to learn that the less I know about acting and the more I know about everything else, the better I'll be at both acting and living.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer the achiever the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee house for the voice of the kingdom.

There is that potential of the expats coming back to the Philippines. But sadly they are no opportunities, no incentive for them to come back home. Successive governments have, in fact, been training them to export them rather than working on the economy to welcome them home.

I do have a lot of female friends who are stand-ups and also women who are actresses and also happen to have an act.