Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
We are all capable of becoming fundamentalists because we get addicted to other people’s wrongness.
Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
Remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience and Infinite love is the only truth; everything else is an illusion.
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
Everything that human beings feel, we feel. We can become extremely wise and sensitive to all of humanity and the whole universe simply by knowing ourselves, just as we are.
When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal.
Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.
By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.
In meditation and in our daily lives there are three qualities that we can nurture, cultivate, and bring out. We already possess these, but they can be ripened: precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go.
The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.
We can begin to open our hearts to others when we have no hope of getting anything back. We just do it for its own sake.