Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete nonattachment-all are synonyms for accumulating merit.

In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.

You must learn to sit with the restless, painful energy and not let the momentum pull you under and cause you to do the same thing over and over that's ruining your life and the lives of those around you.

The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.

The sad part is that all we're trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don't keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.

There's a reason you can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence, and basic goodness.

Until we stop clinging to the concept of good and evil, the world will continue to manifest as friendly goddesses and harmful demons.