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

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

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.

It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart.

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

When I sit with students, I do not just want to help them solve their problems. I want to find a moment with each person where their mind stops and their eyes open. I want us to be together as if we were lying in a field on the underside of the earth on a clear summer night, held only by the magnet of gravity, looking down into a bottomless sea of stars. I want us to remember together the beauty all around us.

Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection with all things.