Every single moment is expressive of the truth of our lives when we know how to look.

Each of us has a genuine capacity for love, forgiveness, wisdom and compassion. Meditation awakens these qualities so that we can discover for ourselves the unique happiness that is our birthright.

We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.

Everyone's mind wanders, without doubt, and we always have to start over. Everyone resists or dislikes the thought of or is too tired to meditate at times, and we have to be able to begin again.

Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we're heading down an unhealthy path, and, if so, let go and change directions.

From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters.

We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.