Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind. (34)

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)

Buddha nature, is like the sun which is always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of I am.

Meditation isn't to disappear into the light. Meditation is to see all of what we are.

When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)