If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It's compassion and presence rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle.

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.

The trouble is that you think you have time.

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.