As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.

In this there is no judgment and no blame, for we seek not to perfect the world but to perfect our love for what is on this earth.

When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being.

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!

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

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

...Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not a pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation.