“When I spend time with students, they tell me that they’ve read something in a book or heard something from a teacher that they don’t think they’re living up to. And I tell them, “Take care of yourself right now.”

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.

As long as I can communicate, I’m not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn’t matter at all.

Through my work and ways of expression, I strive to engage in dialogue with the society that I am living in.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.

The Iraqi people are living a long-running tragedy because of the legacy of the old regime, the Americans and their actions that are unsuitable for Iraqi society, and the weakness of national resolve.

If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.

When I’m living in the world of luxury and celebrity, which is where I found myself for a large part of my life, it’s a walk-on part.

We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.

In the same vein, my teachings are not meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to awakened life and living.