“Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.”

When we bear witness, when we become the situation – homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death – the right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do.

Befriend what’s happening, not just who you’re supposed to be or what the world should be like. This is where you are now. So how do you care for yourself this minute?

The reason we get overwhelmed is that we’re attached to a certain result or taht we want to achieve a certain result or that we to achieve a certain goal.

You can’t do the same stroke coming down a small stream as you would coming down Niagara Falls.

If we weren’t attached we wouldn’t be overwhelmed. It’s endless. And we just take one step after the next

Let me give you a wonderful Zen practice. Wake up in the morning…look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.

The extraordinary language of Nonviolent Communication is changing how parents relate to children, teachers to students, and how we all related to each other and even to ourselves. It is precise, disciplined, and enormously compassionate.

Even if you’re only rowing down a stream, different things happen: maybe the wind changes, maybe the current, and suddenly everything’s different. So gently is really important.

In that state you’ve immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.

I always tell people that if you get upset over what someone says, imagine him or her with a clown’s nose on and you won’t get so angry.

The basic problem, actually, is how to get rid of the idea that we’re going to get rid of our problems. Only then can we relate directly with the real issues of our life.

Don’t make a whole to-do about it. Don’t get down on yourself be- cause you’re not an expert rower; don’t start reading too many books in order to do it right.

Don’t power yourself or blast through; rock with the way things are.

Each of is an arm of Kannon, enabling Kannon to do her work. Like her, we’re also overwhelmed, but when we reallize that the millions of pieces are all operating as one, then there’s no problem.

I honor businesses for what they do, I honor nonprofits for what they do, I honor government for what it does, and then I invite everyone to the table so that together we can come up with innovative and broad-based solutions that can serve as many people as possible.

It’s very rare to be in a state where there’s nothing in, where you have no attachment to any idea or concept about yourself.

It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me.

More are the names of God and infinite are the forms through which He may be approached. In whatever name and form you worship Him, through them you will realise Him.

Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But, of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, but love in vain.

Awake, awake, my Lyre!And tell thy silent master’s humble taleIn sounds that may prevail;Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire

A wild thing may say wild things.

The time has come for humanity to hoist the standard of the oneness of the human world, so that dogmatic formulas and superstitions may end.

As history has demonstrated many times over, change may arrive slowly or quickly but it is the one constant, in one form or another, on which we can all count.