“Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.”

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.

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.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.

From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is!

I am trying to awake the energy contained in the air. These are the main sources of energy. What is considered as empty space is just a manifestation of matter that is not awakened.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.