Our work may be important, but we don't take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.

When we bear witness, when we become the situation - homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death - the right action arises by itself. We don't have to worry about what to do. We don't have to figure out solutions ahead of time. Peacemaking is the functioning of bearing witness. Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.

It's very rare to be in a state where there's nothing in, where you have no attachment to any idea or concept about yourself. In that state you've immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.

Don't make a whole to-do about it. Don't get down on yourself be- cause you're not an expert rower; don't start reading too many books in order to do it right.

People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case,...we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait.

Our tendency in life is to avoid things that frighten us. But in order to become whole, we need to go deeper and deeper into ourselves by reaching further and further into the things we fear.

I always have this red nose in my pocket, and if it looks like I'm taking things too seriously, or the person I'm talking to is taking them too seriously, I put the nose on. It doesn't matter what we're doing or talking about, it doesn't matter if we agree or disagree, the nose changes everything.