There is a story that 2,500 years ago, while he was giving a teaching, the Buddha placed his big toe pointedly on the earth and with that dramatic gesture revealed to an audience that the universe we live in is pure paradise. Not that what we see normally is the best of all possible worlds, as Voltaire's Candide tried to convince himself, but that if we understood the true nature of reality, we would see the planet we live on as the perfect theatre for positive evolution that it truly is.
— Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution