You need a community. They remind you when you forget, and you remind them when they forget.

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was Young. And my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.

When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being.

To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless.

We can easily become loyal to our suffering … but it's not the end of the path.