Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves.

At least once a year, I imagine that I am about to die. Looking back as truthfully as I can at my entire life, I give full attention to the things I wish hadn’t occurred. Recognizing these mistakes honestly but without self-recrimination, I try to rejoice in the innate wisdom that allows me to see so bravely, and I feel compassion for how I so frequently messed up. Then I can go forward. The future is wide open, and what I do with it is up to me.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.

Wholeheartedly do what it takes to awaken your clear-seeing intelligence, but one day at a time, one moment at a time. If we live that way, we will benefit this earth.

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.

We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there.