Your distance from your partner is the distance from your heart. The things that make relationships difficult are some of the most precious aspects to us.

Wanting things to be otherwise is the very essence of suffering. We almost never directly experience what pain is because our reaction to it is so immediate that most of what we call pain is actually our experience of resistance to that phenomenon. And the resistance is usually a good deal more painful than the original sensation.

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

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25)

Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.

[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)