Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.

When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal.

Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.

Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by strong emotion, do we remember that it is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can't practice when distracted but KNOW we can't, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal -- quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is.

Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.

Sometimes we find that we like our thoughts so much that we don't want to let them go.