Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.

The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love this person because I need them.” Or, “I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.” This isn’t love at all - it is attachment - and attachment is rigid, it is very different from love.

Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely.

We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing.

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.

We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy—material or spiritual.