“We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.”

As we progress in it, the process reveals itself as wonderfully interdependent: We, from our side, try continually to generate devotion.

If all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the nature of mind.

So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.

How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics.

Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries.

The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.

All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle.

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping.

At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment.

When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us.

What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them?

How we live now can cost us our entire future.

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.

The act of meditation is being spacious.

Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.

Why exactly are we so frightened of death that we avoid looking at it altogether? Somewhere, deep down, we know we cannot avoid facing death forever.

I’m not going to sit here now and say ‘do this,’ or ‘do that.’ But you must – must – expunge any vestige of racism.

People flatter us because they can depend upon our credulity.

I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.

Forethought and prudence are the proper qualities of a leader. [Lat., Ratio et consilium, propriae ducis artes.]

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution. [Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.]

Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished.

I find ways to make things affordable. If the kids want the looks, they can be able to go afford it.