“Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.”

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.

The second noble truth says that this resistance is the mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.

Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.

Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.

Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.

Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.

All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life … everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.

It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.

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

Whatever creature comes to you, human or otherwise, treat it with consideration.

Humility, reverence, compassion, forbearance, sacrifice and self-control are the qualities that reveal the outcome of the true education.

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.

Loving yourself + others is a magically addictive sensation.

Let’s get loose with Compassion. Let’s drown in the delicious ambience of Love.

The words we use for the Creator are a reflect of ourselves. If we think of God as fear and shame, we are scared and have something to be ashamed of … But if we see love, compassion and kindness, it is because we possess these qualities.

And you think compassion’s a flaw And you’ll never let it show and you’re sure you’ve hurt in a way that no one will ever know.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.