“We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.”

Thinking we are only supposed to have loving & compassionate feelings can be a terrible obstacle to spiritual practice.

Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.

It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn’t depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn’t depend on how long you’ve held on to the old view.

Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.

We can understand the inherent radiance & purity of our minds by understanding metta. Like the mind, metta is not distorted by what it encounters.

All forms of meditation strengthen & direct our attention through the cultivation of three key skills: concentration, mindfulness & compassion or loving & kindness.

In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go.

Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty.

Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation.

over time, offering loving kindness to all beings everywhere, including ourselves, unites us to one another so that we know that we can not go forward forgetting those left behind.

We don’t need any sort of religious orientation to lead a life that is ethical, compassionate & kind.

While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now.

Mindfulness is the agent of our freedom. Through mindfulness we arrive at faith we grow in wisdom & we attain equanimity.

People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments.

For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.

Remember, there are beginnings in endings, through destruction there comes life.

People talk about love like it is patient and kind. Love is also dark. It is ferocious and angry and destructive.

We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

Suicide is not an answer, it’s destruction.

Love is a flame that burns everything other than itself. It is the destruction of all that is false and the fulfillment of all that is true.

For me, love carries the seeds of its own destruction.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.

These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.