When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice

Whenever we strive to make progress in our meditations, contemplations and so forth we are practicing effort.

We underestimate the value of patience. It is possible that people might sometimes interrupt our meditation sessions or Dharma study, but they can never take away our opportunity to train in inner virtues such as patience. It is this mental training, rather than outer virtuous activities, that is the essence of Dharma practice.

When we look at external things, we can usually distinguish those that are useful and valuable from those that are not. We must learn to look at our mind in the same way.

Love is the great protector, protecting us from anger and jealousy.

Since the real purpose of meditation is to increase our capacity to help others, taking time each day to meditate is not selfish. We have to manage our time and energy in such a way that we can be of maximum benefit to others, and to do this we need time alone to recover our strength, collect our thoughts, and see things in perspective

Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger - all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions.