When I sit with students, I do not just want to help them solve their problems. I want to find a moment with each person where their mind stops and their eyes open. I want us to be together as if we were lying in a field on the underside of the earth on a clear summer night, held only by the magnet of gravity, looking down into a bottomless sea of stars. I want us to remember together the beauty all around us.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

As desire abates, generosity is born. When we are connected and present, what else is there to do but give?

It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart.

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.