To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others.
To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.
Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.
To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.
The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.
May you know the beauty of your own true nature.
We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us – which in most cases is a very long time – but to look at it as just that, a vehicle, a raft to help us cross through the waters of doubt, confusion, desire, and fear.
The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.
There are many ways up the mountain and each of us must choose a practice that feels true to our heart.
Spiritual life doesn’t make you a good person; you ARE a good person, you are a holy being when you are born. What spiritual life does is remind us that this is who we really are.
It’s much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.
There is a web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall.
All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life’s situations.
Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.
Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement...
Though outer events may be difficult, the key to our happiness is how our mind responds to them.
The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.
Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate.