The key to cultivating confidence in ourselves is understanding our right to make the truth our own.

Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have-it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

I've always said that lovingkindness and compassion are inevitably woven throughout meditation practice even if the words are never used or implied, no matter what technique or method we are using.

Some things hurt, you know, and there's pain. But we magnify the suffering of it often, I think, by our reactions.

I am totally amazed at the spread of interest in meditation. When I first came back from studying in India in 1974, I would be asked in social situations what I did. When I replied, "I teach meditation" they would frequently look at me as though to say "That is weird," and sort of sidle away.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

There's a famous quotation from the time the Buddha learned of the deaths of two of his greatest disciples: "It's as if the sun and the moon have left the sky." From that quotation, I would guess that while the Buddha loved all beings everywhere, with no exclusion, he also had relationships that were special to him, and he felt their loss.