We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good... The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.

Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.

Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.

If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.

Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.