“Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.”

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.

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 you care about perfection, you care about an expectation. But there is also caring for where I am right now, for what’s happening right now.

We’re creating a little niche for ourselves instead of working the whole canvas.

[H]owever hard the road, however difficult today, tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow may not be better, but we must believe that it will be.

I’m just not a naturally cheery person. I’m naturally moody. I know that from people who spend a lot of time with me. People who spend a lot of time with me may not wish to spend a lot more time with me.

Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.

I may fall here in the Senate chamber, but I will. never make any compromise with any such men.

Beware the abuse of Power. Both by those we disagree with, as well as those we may agree with

Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.

Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants.

For many Americans, including many who are employed, going to the doctor when they fall ill or become injured may not be an option because of the absence of health insurance.