This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we go.

As long as we're caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we're always running from discomfort, we're going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and discomfort, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us develop inner strength. And what's especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think that we've hit the bottom, when things are at their worst.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel; take an interest and be curious.

Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.

If you ask why we meditate, I would say it's so we can become more flexible and tolerant to the present moment.

There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.