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

Know that the freedom you seek can be found right here where you are.

As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

Each moment of every day is new and then it vanishes. Where is that day? Where is that moment?

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?