With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming,"
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116)
trans by Robert Thurman

I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death.

Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.

At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.

There are wonderfully intrinsic moments when life makes sense, and doubts are banished as irrelevant in those moments. Of course, we can't stay in that state. We're not here to be blissed out all the time.

I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.