“We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open.”

As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.

No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?

We each need to make our lion’s roar – to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears – to declare our right to awaken.

Use whatever has come to awaken patience, understanding, and love.

The waves do keep coming, so learn to surf.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

Train your mind the same way you’d train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.

Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are.

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.

Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.

I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.

I think I would like to discover a new root where people don’t get bored with people singing boring lines but something exciting. That’d be interesting.

You have to treat yourself like a mushroom to some degree, in order to keep on discovering things.

This was really what I was supposed to be doing, and it was a great blessing to have discovered this, and to be doing what was God’s will for your life.

Find out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself.

We must rediscover our faith in the future and join with one another to ensure that nonviolence is the prevalent choice for government, law enforcement, the non-profit sector, business, education, media, entertainment, arts, and for the global citizenry.

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?

The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!