Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely.

We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

In any moment we can learn to let go of hatred and fear. We can rest in peace, love, and forgiveness. It is never too late. Yet to sustain love we need to develop practices that cultivate and strengthen the natural compassion within us.

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.

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.

Thich Nhat Hanh has the ability to express some of the most profound teachings of interdependence and emptiness I've ever heard. With the eloquence of a poet, he holds up a sheet of paper and teaches us that the rain cloud and the tree and the logger who cut the tree down are all there in the paper. He's been one of the most significant carriers of the lamp of the dharma to the West that we have had.

Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?