“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.

The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.

Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.

I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.

Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something – usually ourselves.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.

Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.

When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.

I’m a very emotional person, a person of real extremes, and that’s often destructive both to me and others.

For the DPRK and its military, the ouster of Saddam Hussein conveyed a powerful message: it’s not enough to pretend to have weapons of mass destruction. To be secure, a nation must build them, own them, and hide them.

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.

And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is chiefly concerned with the establishment of something new.

I’m planning a catastrophe.

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.