Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.

Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.

Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)

If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.

Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)