“Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.”

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.

Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.

When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.

The second noble truth says that this resistance is the mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.

Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.

Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.

Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.

Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.

All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life … everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.

It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.

We are all human beings, part of the human race, and we need to be compassionate and giving and kind with one another.

The measure of a man is not how many servants he has but how many men he serves .

Those who are unkind to themselves will not appreciate your kindness. Do it anyway.

There is no such thing as a simple act of compassion or an inconsequential act of service. Everything we do for another person has infinite consequences.

God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.

Help someone in distress and you lighten your own burden; the very joy of alleviating the sorrow of another is the lessening of one’s own.

Compassion is even more powerful than courage. Sure, with courage you can conquer a world – but only with compassion can you heal and build it.

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.