“Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.”

The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.

We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.

Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.

When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.

Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else.

Mindful parenting is the hardest job on the planet, but it’s also one that has the potential for the deepest kinds of satisfactions over the life span, and the greatest feelings of interconnectedness and community and belonging.

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to what goes on in the present moment in your body, mind and the world around you.

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.

Meditation is really a non-doing. It is the only human endeavor I know of being where you already are.

When you’re walking, just walk. When you’re eating, just eat. Not in front of the TV, not with the newspaper. It turns out, that’s huge.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we’re continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.

I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.

The eyes of my eyes are opened.

I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.