The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.

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.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.

Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.