This is bravery: using the challenge of daily life to sharpen our mind and open our heart.

It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor-the determining factor of success and happiness is contentment.

Our power comes not from suppressing others but from uplifting them.

If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen.

Being fooled into trying to make things work out for 'me' is called samsara.

We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing.

Our only reliable source of strength is the goodness of our hearts. Our only foundation for coming to terms with the suffering of the times is our innate need to be decent human beings.