Meditation isn’t about what’s happening; it’s about how you relate to what’s happening.

Because the development of inner calm and energy happens completely within and isn't dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful - and a huge relief.

With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others.

It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.

Find a gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it and by using that pause to collect ourselves and shift our response

When we are devoted to the development of kindness, it becomes our ready response, so that reacting from compassion, from caring, is not a question of giving ourselves a lecture: 'I don't really feel like it, but I'd better be helpful, or what would people think?'

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion.