To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.

Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely.

Gratitude is the confidence in life itself... As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy. We experience the courage to rejoice in our own good fortune and in the good fortune of others... We can be joyful for people we love, for moments of goodness, for sunlight and trees, and for the very breath within our lungs. Like an innocent child, we can rejoice in life itself, in being alive.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, “This is a new day.”