Imagine a hot tub for the mind. That is what meditation is; it can bathe your mind in relaxing thoughts.

A calm mind releases the most precious capacity a human being can have: the capacity to turn anger into compassion, fear into fearlessness, and hatred into love.

When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.

The real essentials of life - compassion, kindness, good will, forgiveness - are what is fundamental to living as a true human being.

There is a close relationship between a house full of possessions and a heart full of desires, between a cluttered closet and a crowded schedule, between having no place to put possessions and having no priorities for our life. These are precious clues. They remind us to slow down, to live in the present, to reduce the desires that drain our vitality, to clarify priorities so we can give our time and attention to what matters most. Tragically, in the press of modern life, we have managed to get backwards one of life's most vital truths: people are to be loved; things are to be used.

Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship.

The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone.