The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, 'I wonder what's going to happen today.' And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.

we come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.

Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe.

If you have rage and righteously act it out and blame it all on others, it's really you who suffers. The other people and the environment suffer also, but you suffer more because you're being eaten up inside with rage, causing you to hate yourself more and more

Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.

Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?