By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.
We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.
Compassion isn’t morose; it’s something replenishing and opening; that’s why it makes us happy.
In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.
Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.
I’m learning that to be at home everywhere, I have to be sure to include the place I actually live.
Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.
Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.
Love as a power can go anywhere. It isn’t sentimental. It doesn’t have to be pretty, yet it doesn’t deny pain.
Loving kindness is the spirit of friendship toward yourself and others.
The movement of the heart as we practice generosity in the outer world mirrors the movement of the heart when we let go of conditioned views about ourselves on our inner journey. Letting go creates a joyful sense of space in our minds.
Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.
Faith is not a commodity we either have or don’t have-it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.
True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.
Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves.
Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.
The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY.
For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are.
Pure generosity emerges when we give without the need for our offering to be received in a certain way. That’s why the best kind of generosity comes from inner abundance, rather than from feeling deficient and hollow, starved for validation.
Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference – in our own lives and those of others.