We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.

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

No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear...the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away. (5)

To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.

Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.