The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

The trouble is that you think you have time.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

Embodied courage chooses not to wait until illness or notice of death demands attention.

It only take a few minutes of meditation to directly realize we are a river of sensations, feelings, thoughts, perceptions. How can we navigate this evanescent river of life wisely? With mindful awareness and love it becomes clear. You can fight against the river of change, or use its wisdom to teach you how to graciously move and create and flow with the full measure of joy and sorrow, gain and loss, praise and blame that make up every human incarnation.