The ideal that marriage aims at is that of spiritual union through the physical. The human love that it incarnates is intended to serve as a stepping stone to diving or universal love.
The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance.
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.
Just think out for yourselves, if a man who was good yesterday has become bad after having come in contact with me, is he responsible that he has deteriorated or am I? ... It is well to take the blame sometimes.
If there was any teacher in the world who insisted upon the inexorable law of cause and effect, it was Gautam, and yet my friends, the Buddhists outside India, would, if they could, avoid the effects of their own acts.