Everyday we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice.
You listen not for the purpose of judging, criticizing or analyzing. You listen only to help the other person to express himself and find some relief from his suffering.
There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.
We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Because you are alive, everything is possible.
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
You can use your life in a very useful and intelligent way. You can very well transform that negative energy into a positive energy that empowers you and makes life meaningful.
You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent.
To be loved means to be recognized as existing.
People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.
For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.
Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.
Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.
In the moment when we are able to smile, to look at ourselves with compassion, our world begins to change.
Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.
Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.
Silence is essential. We need silence just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.