“Compassion is a college education. It’s a doctorate.”

We instantly believe everything we think. Isn’t that insane? It’s good for us to explore the depravity of our minds, so we know we are just as crazy as everyone else!

The ultimate act of power is surrender.

I just try to keep my heart open. By this, I mean to try not to let my own programmed reaction to things keep me closed down for too long.

As we do practice something unexpected starts to happen-we get happy!

Real compassion is not emotional. Real compassion is based on the experience that all beings, which might appear separate, are actually a part of my own body, and I am a part of the body of the universe. We are not separate. So if one being hurts, I also hurt.

You can’t think yourself out of a box that’s made of your thoughts.

I mope around less. It is horrible. I miss it.

The presence of real love in the world inspires me.

You can’t manipulate a heart open. You can only allow it to open in the right circumstances.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew whatever it was that I was looking for was real.

Practice is not about how you feel while you are doing it. You are planting seeds.

You can never really know what a guru is as long as you are imprisoned by your own thoughts and circular ego.

Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.

All we can know is our own subjective version of reality. That’s the way we go through our lives. Everybody.

You cannot think your way out of a box made of thought.

We all inhabit our lives, in different ways to some degree. We see ourselves a certain way, and based on how we see ourselves, that’s how we see the world.

In deep self acceptance, grows a compassionate understanding.

Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.

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

Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

Kindness always comes back.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.