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

If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.

We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us—which in most cases is a very long time—but to look at it as just that, a vehicle, a raft to help us cross through the waters of doubt, confusion, desire, and fear.

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves.

To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless.

The independence and rebelliousness of our adolescence offer us yet another quality essential to our practice; the insistence that we find out the truth for ourselves, accepting no one's word above our own experience.