Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.

"Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out.

Everything is fresh, the essence of realization.

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem. The point is to see it.

The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.