To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.

Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

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

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.

As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.

We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.