Mindfulness meditation is the embrace of any and all mind states in awareness, without preferring one to another.

The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.

Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?

You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.

Any really good scientist is as much an artist as a scientist. All the interesting stuff is found on the edge between knowing and not knowing. I know that sounds like a meditation teacher speaking, but when you're in the laboratory, or you're theorizing about physics, you need to know what you know, but if you can't get out from under that, you won't be able to make that insightful, first-time connection that nobody else has seen before.

Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.

No one can listen to your body for you... To grow and heal, you have to take responsibility for listening to it yourself.