I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life.
Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you’ll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.
By the end of your incredibly arduous, disappointing, stressful journey, you will be your true self, in a place where you belong, with friends who truly understand you and bring all sorts of opportunities your way.
Where your attention goes, your life goes.
Don’t let your life revolve around whatever you’re trying not to do or feel. Live to experience, not to avoid.
Your individuality is the most valuable thing you have.
If you’re doing something you love with people you love in a place you love, you are going to create something of value to the world.
Fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured. Without it, we wouldn’t even know what it means to be brave.
Remember, intimacy increases with honesty. Share less to keep people away and more to draw them closer.
To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there.
The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.
Bad artists ignore the darkness of human existence. Good artists often get stuck there. Great artists embrace the full catastrophe of our condition and find beyond it an even deeper truth of peace, healing, and redemption.
Imagine what you’d do if it absolutely didn’t matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back.
Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.
Menders of all times and places have taught that silencing the thoughts in our heads and opening to the experience of the body and emotions is the basis of all healing. It’s the only means by which we can reclaim our true nature or feel the subtle cues telling us how to find our way through life.
In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.
Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.
Friends, there are many areas in which I need encouragement, but worrying is not one of them. I worry the way Renee Fleming sings high Cs: Effortlessly. Loudly. At length.
Angels come in many shapes and sizes, and most of them are not invisible.