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.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?

Everyone and everything is in some degree or other our teacher.

May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion. Imagine asking for that.