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.

Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both...Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .

Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.

I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.

The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.