The idea of karma is that you continually get the teaching that you need to open your heart.

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.

When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.

One very powerful and effective way to work with this tendency to push away pain and hold on to pleasure is the practice of tonglen.  In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we  breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it.

Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.

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