Happiness requires that we give up a worldly orientation-not worldly things, but a worldly attachment to things. We have to surrender all outcomes. We have to live here but appreciate the joke.

People who have life-challenging experiences who choose to remain invested in a consistent catastrophic interpretation are not the ones I meet. I have met many more people who have recognized how vital it is to their healing and to the quality of their life to interpret their experiences differently. That is why some of the people I've met who have life-challenging illnesses are much happier than some people I've known who are physically quite healthy and yet who live lives of greater desperation and depression.

We are the only species systematically destroying its own habitat.

I've never seen service as separate from my spiritual practice or my spiritual teaching.

Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for.

The world in which we live today-reflecting in so many way the opposite of our sweetness and love-reminds us how desperately important it is to break the spell that's been cast on the human race and retrieve our shining self.

Every time we're about to criticize someone for what we think they did wrong, let's first remember to thank them for the things they did right. And to mean it; to sincerely affirm them. Then, if there's still a problem that needs to be shared, it will come from a completely different energy -- and actually be heard!