“As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.”

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something – usually ourselves.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

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.

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

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.

There is no growth in the comfort zone.

My sun and my moon signs are mostly Cancer – it’s really strong. We’re deeply intuitive and sentimental. I really like to take care of people, nurturing them. I’m very passionate about the things I do and like to see people I love grow.

I ain’t want my kids to grow up and call me Thug. I don’t want anybody to kind of look at me like that.

What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.

We must somehow bring our soldiers back home and not allow them to be trophies in a growing, deepening crisis between the U.S. and China.

Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.

I grew up all around the Bay, but I spent most of my time in Hayward and I loved it. It was a really big apartment community, there was a whole bunch of kids.