Whatever your difficulties - a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness - you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do - despite your circumstances - are to be present and to be willing to love.

As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

Everything has a beginning and an ending. Make peace with that and all will be well...In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.

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.

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.

Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing.