You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.

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

We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.

One way to practice staying present is to simply sit still for a while and listen. For one minute, listen to the sounds close to you. For one minute, listen to the sounds at a distance. Just listen attentively.

The Buddha taught that we're not actually in control, which is a pretty scary idea. But when you let things be as they are, you will be a much happier, more balanced, compassionate person.

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don't interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.