Though outer events may be difficult, the key to our happiness is how our mind responds to them.

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it."

No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity.

Tending to ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.

Great pain, when it is honored from the heart, opens into great understanding.

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

Beneath the sophistication of Buddhist psychology lies the simplicity of compassion. We can touch into this compassion whenever the mind is quiet, whenever we allow the heart to open.