Extend an act of kindness each day. No one has to know. It can be a smile, reassuring words, a small favor - without expecting something in return.

Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.

Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it.

Along with judging myself harshly, I'd also always seen the truth of goodness in me.

Just remember that everyone is struggling; everyone is living with fear and uncertainty and it doesn't matter what their politics are.

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.