Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.

The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.

We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that’s who we are. We mistake the openness of our being—the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment—for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer.

Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.

We can begin to open our hearts to others when we have no hope of getting anything back. We just do it for its own sake.

If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.