The joy of meeting someone you love, the sadness of losing a close friend, the richness of a vivid dream, the serenity of a walk through a garden on a spring day, the total absorption of a deep meditative state – these things and other like them constitute the reality of our experience of consciousness. regardless of the content of any one of these experirences, no one in his or her right mind would doubt their reality. Any experience of consciousness –from the most mundane to the most elevated — has a certain coherence and, at the same time, a high degree of privacy, which means that it always exists from a particular point of view. The experience of consciousness is entirely subjective. The paradox, however, is that despite the indubitable reality of our subjectivity and thousands of years of philosophical examination, there is little consensus on what consciousness is. Science, with its characteristic third-person method – the objective perspective from the outside – has made strikingly little headway in this understanding. ~ The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

“One who does not exchange his own happiness for the suffering of others surely does not achieve Buddhahood. How could one find happiness even in the cycle of existence?

Not to mention the next life, even in this life, a desired goal of a servant who does not do his work and of a master who does not pay out the wages cannot be accomplished”

~ Pandita Shantideva (From the text Bodhicharyavatara or Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life)