The moment you understand the importance of loving yourself, you will stop hurting others.

‎"The earth is so beautiful. We are beautiful also. We can allow ourselves to walk mindfully, touching the earth, our wonderful mother, with each step. We don't need to wish our friends, 'Peace be with you.' Peace is already with them. We only need to help them cultivate the habit of touching peace in each moment."-

In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.

Our role as gardeners is to choose, plant and tend the best seeds within the garden of our consciousness. Learning to look deeply at our consciousness is our greatest gift and our greatest need, for there lie the seeds of suffering and of love, the very roots of our being, of who we are. Mindfulness...is the guide and the practice by which we learn how to use the seeds of suffering to nourish the seeds of love.

Human beings are innately loving beings. When we fail to love, it is because an element of ignorance has intruded into our experience, submerging our natural impulse to love.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert. With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.