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.

Loving ourselves opens us to truly knowing ourselves as part of the matrix of existence, inextricably connected to the boundlessness of life... when we see that we are far bigger than the person that is delineated by family or cultural expectations, we realize we are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine.

The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY.

It's interesting that people bring different things to oppressive and difficult situations, when they're reduced to the barest terms of survival. That's what provides tension in a lot of films.

Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.

Compassion grows in us when we know how the energy of love is available all around us.

It is because of that balanced relationship to the moment that mindfulness serves as the platform for insight... if we feel an emotion, for example, and struggle against it right away, there is not going to be a lot of learning going on. In the same way, if we are swamped by that emotion, overcome by it, there won't be enough space for there to be learning or insight.