When repeated difficulties do arise, our first spiritual approach is to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying 'sadness, sadness', or 'remembering, remembering', or whatever.

With growing awareness, you can see where you're caught or where you suffer or where you create suffering. You can then turn toward the difficulties that arise in your life with compassion, bow, and say, these too are part of human incarnation.

In this world there are two great sources of strength. One rests with those who are not afraid to kill. The other rests with those who are not afraid to love.

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.

No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.

It is true that the heart has its seasons, just as a flower opens to the sunlight and closes to the night. We need to be respectful of those rhythms. But we can't close down for long. It is our true nature to have an open heart.