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.

The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patterns of fear & jealousy.

We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.

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.

Love as a power can go anywhere. It isn't sentimental. It doesn't have to be pretty, yet it doesn't deny pain.

As we look around, it's very clear that in this world people do outrageous things to one another all of the time. It's not that these qualities or actions make us bad people, but they bring tremendous suffering if we don't know how to work with them.

One of the things that I think makes it hard in this society for us to tell the truth is the kind of conventional relationship to adversity. Things aren't always easy and rather than being taught to have kindness to ourselves and others in the light of that we're taught something very different; that it's wrong and rejected - that's a lot of conditioning to step away from.