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.

We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

Anger shows us precisely where we are stuck, where our limits are, where we cling to beliefs and fears.

Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing.

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

We can step out of our small sense of self and awaken to this reality. One of the reasons people get confused about freedom, enlightenment, and liberation is because this awakened consciousness has different facets or different dimensions, a bit like a crystal. If you hold this luminous crystal up to the light and turn it, it will take a beam of white light and refract it into the many colors of the spectrum.

In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!