“In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful.”

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.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are not going to fight the fights that I do.

I love going to the factories of La Plata, or Little Havana and seeing them roll cigars. I get excited.

Oh, no, you’re kidding.’ I go, ‘No, I’m really honest.’

I’ve been given a second chance in life, and I don’t want to let a minute go by without enjoying it.

His statement was, “We’re going to the same place, except you’re taking a taxi, and I’m driving my own car.” That’s me and Ian MacKaye’s relationship. I love him, he’s great.

That’s the way I try to live. I think it’s the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.

It’s hard for a liberal to go on between Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, because it’s like doing country music after hip-hop. I mean, just, the audience doesn’t go from one to the other.

My views about God come from my dad. Dad told me that he believed Nature, which to him included humankind, to be so beautiful, so magnificent, that there had to be something behind it all.