Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.

Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.

We can stop struggling with what occurs and see its true face without calling it the enemy. It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything - not about winning or losing - but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is. That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate. That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives.

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.

When resistance is gone, the demons are gone.

Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.