When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present - our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love - everything that moves us most deeply.

Train your mind the same way you’d train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.

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.

The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love this person because I need them.” Or, “I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.” This isn’t love at all - it is attachment - and attachment is rigid, it is very different from love.

Whatever you believe cosmologically, we all know the tears of the world. We each carry a certain measure of those tears in our hearts.

Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

The light around someone who speaks truth, who consistently acts with compassion for all, even in great difficulty, is visible to all around them.