If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.

Just pausing for two to three breaths is a perfect way to stay present. This is a good use of our life. Indeed, it is an excellent, joyful use of our life. Instead of getting better and better at avoiding, we can learn to accept the present moment as if we had invited it, and work with it instead of against it, making it our ally rather than our enemy.

Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself.

Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego... Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.

So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior. (68)