“There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.”

When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.

Perhaps the most “spiritual” thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.

From the point of view of the meditative traditions the entire society is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy.

Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.

Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.

The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.

We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.

Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.

When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.

Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else.

Mindful parenting is the hardest job on the planet, but it’s also one that has the potential for the deepest kinds of satisfactions over the life span, and the greatest feelings of interconnectedness and community and belonging.

There are people who are born and die and never once are aware of their breath going in and out of their body. That’s how far away they live from themselves

I soon became aware that there wasn’t enough time or opportunity to kiss all the girls in the world. The best thing is to stay cool – just be choosy and wait for the right opportunity.

It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.

I’m sure they learn a lot, and some of them, it makes them aware of what they wish to do. I was – that’s the way I was – autodidact.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect – completely removed in fact – even as we ourselves are.

Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it.