If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.

The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.

Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.

For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go - damned as it is - that exercises the heart.

When we don't get what we want, there's a legitimate grieving, and then the spiritual journey truly begins, because not getting what we want breaks our self-reference; and once that is broken, we are aware that we are a part of a larger whole. It changes everything.

Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth.

The real & lasting practice for each of us is to remove what obstructs us so we can be who we are.