All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.

The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle.

Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.

How do we cultivate the conditions for joy to expand? We train in staying present.

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. Why? Because it is all we ever have.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal -- quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is.