Take moments to savor what is beautiful and good.

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.

Meditation can change the flavor of the season.

When you are in touch with your body and heart, it allows you to then be in the world and act with intention and clarity and kindness.

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.

If you let someone know you appreciate him or her, especially when you're going to disagree, it gets that person's defenses down.

Most of us grow up with a sense of "I'm not intelligent enough." It's such a sad thing that in the West we worship a certain kind of left-brain intelligence.