“We all inhabit our lives, in different ways to some degree. We see ourselves a certain way, and based on how we see ourselves, that’s how we see the world.”

The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff – guilt, anger – this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.

It’s inexplicable why somebody can lose a leg and it doesn’t effect them at all emotionally; and another person can lose a foot and be destroyed for the rest of their lives.

Don’t wait for a Guru. Your life is your Guru.

Surrender happens by Grace. All we’re doing is cleaning up the room so when Surrender walks in, He can sit down.

Don’t give up on your dreams. You can become the person you know you really are.

Bliss is easy, just take a drug. What is hard is feeling good about our real selves.

Even if somebody tells us something, the hit, the light goes on inside of us, not out there. We learn and understand everything within ourselves.

I chant to save my heart. Every time I sit down, that’s what I’m doing.

Let’s just chant and be good people, alright?

We are not separate. So if one being hurts, I also hurt.

Ultimately when I am with you all, what I see is my Guru. And what is he? He is love.

To love somebody is to let them be who they are and do what they have to do.

Compassion is a college education. It’s a doctorate.

The repetition of the holy names reveals a presence hidden within the heart. Something begins to happen that’s very disturbing – we get happy.

One of your biggest lessons so far in life has been to learn to forgive myself over and over again and not to be so harsh with myself.

The only real protection will come from doing a spiritual practice over a prolonged period of time. Because it retrains us to see the world and ourselves in a different way.

I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.

In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don’t know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

Does it mean this, does it mean that that’s all anybody wants to know? I’d say what any decent poet would say if anyone dared ask him to analyze his work: if you see it, darling, then it’s there!

The Russians and the Chinese have been absolutely clear they don’t want to see Iran with a nuclear weapon.

No one wants to see self-destructive riots because there’s no future in riots.

Love adorns itself; it seeks to prove inward by outward beauty.

Above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books.

Relationships only work in a spiritual sense when you and I really see that we are one.