When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.

Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.

An unhurried mind brings the capacity to make wise choices every day - choices of how we use our time, of where we place our resources and our love. I am not just talking about avoiding the rat race, but about a life full of an artistic beauty - a life that has almost vanished from modern civilization, but is quite within the reach of everyone.

When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.

Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings and fits of emotion begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible; we can say yes or we can say no. It is profoundly liberating.

Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either.