Even before smart phones and the Internet, we had many ways to distract our selves. Now that's compounded by a factor of trillions.

I thought it was a stroke of genius that Hans Selye used the word stress, because it's true that if you don't know how to be in wise relationship to life, certain health consequences are bound to happen. If you stand up 12 hours a day on an assembly line, or constantly tell yourself life is not worth living, the body will respond in certain somewhat predictable ways.

Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.

When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.

The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

We call the effort to cultivate our ability to be in the present moment ‘practice’ or ‘meditation practice.’

It’s interesting to look at your children as line-in Zen masters who can put their finger on places where you’re resistant, or thinking narrowly, in ways noone else can. You can either lose your mind and your authenticity in the process of reacting to all that stuff, or you can use it as the perfect opportunity to grow and nourish your children by attending to what is deepest and best in them and in yourself.