This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.

Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.