“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”

We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.

The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it’s over, it’s over.

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.

People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it’s like they are holding the baby of you.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

What is meditation? Meditation is our conscious awareness of something vast and infinite within us. Meditation grants us Peace, Light and Bliss.

As my Russian improves, I become increasingly conscious of just what sort of a society I live in.

The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

Each individual has to know himself. He has to know himself as the infinite, eternal and immortal Consciousness.

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

Next to meditation is music, soulful music, the music that stirs and elevates our aspiring consciousness.