Joan Halifax

When I first was exposed to Buddhism in the mid-1960s, I said it was so practical and utterly pragmatic. That's what attracted me to Buddhism.

We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival.

Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.

A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

I'm consistently telling stories about the value of the human condition and connectedness and things like that.