Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile.

No one knows how this world came into being. It is a creation of consciousness itself. It's extraordinary, a mystery.

How did we get into this funny-looking body that has a hole at one end in which we regularly stuff dead plants and animals? It's bizarre that we got here, incarnated into this world with these bodies.

Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing.

In this world there are two great sources of strength. One rests with those who are not afraid to kill. The other rests with those who are not afraid to love.

Every individual in the world has a unique contribution.

In this there is no judgment and no blame, for we seek not to perfect the world but to perfect our love for what is on this earth.

Tending to ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.

Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.

Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.

The work of your heart, the work of taking time, to listen, to help, is also your gift to the whole of the world

Live in joy, luminosity, and peace even among the troubles of the world. Remember who you are.

Meet this transient world with neither grasping nor fear, trust the unfolding of life, and you will attain true serenity.

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.

In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.

Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.

Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.

Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.

To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.

Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.

As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out. But if you say, 'This is what I am, it is a fact that I am going to investigate and understand,' then you can go beyond.

Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely.

It is our commitment to wholeness that matters, the willingness to unfold in every deep aspect of our being.

The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.

The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.

When we have for so long been judged by everyone we meet, just to look into the eyes of another who does not judge us can be extraordinarily healing.

What is truly a part of our spiritual path is that which brings us alive. If gardening brings us alive, that is part of our path, if it is music, if it is conversation...we must follow what brings us alive.

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.

Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find loving kindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in loving kindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart.

A second quality of mature sirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance....

...Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not a pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation.

To begin to meditate is to look into our lives with interest in kindness and discover how to be wakeful and free.

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.

The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.

Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

We can struggle with what is. We can judge and blame others or ourselves. Or we can accept what cannot be changed. Peace comes from an honorable and open heart accepting what is true. Do we want to remain stuck? Or to release the fearful sense of self and rest kindly where we are?

In deep self acceptance, grows a compassionate understanding.

What would we have to hold in compassion to be at peace right now? What would we have to let go of to be at peace right now?

The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let go into the heart of compassion; you can weep.