Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find loving kindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in loving kindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart.

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

In this there is no judgment and no blame, for we seek not to perfect the world but to perfect our love for what is on this earth.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.

In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.

We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.