It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.

Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep.

Compassionate action involves working with ourselves as much as working with others.

We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's the essence of samsara - the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.

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.

Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.