The moment you wake up, right away, you can smile... You are aware that a new day is beginning, that life is offering you twenty-four brand new hours to live, and that that's the most precious of gifts.

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!

Understanding and Love are not two separate things, but just one. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you cannot help but love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.

They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world who escapes criticism.

A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.