Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.

The true bodhisattva spirit grows out of this personal sense of freedom. You discover that you don't feel so needy anymore. You don't crave another refueling - with shamatha or with other people's love and attention - because you know within yourself how to be free, how to be confident. With this sense of security and freedom, you begin to direct your attention to the needs of others. The compassion expands.

Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.

True freedom comes about through confidence in liberating any and all thought states.

When you have achieved a state of calmness and readiness, then you are ready to know, ready to understand in a deep way the dance between emptiness and appearance. Once you catch a glimpse of that dance, don't hang on to it. Just let it go, like your first glimpse of essence love.

A mantra is basically a means of talking with your thoughts and feelings. It's a time-honored method sometimes referred to as prayer, but really it's an opening of a conversation between the heart and the mind.

When you first start out don't set yourself a lofty goal of sitting down to meditate for twenty minutes. Aim instead for ten minutes or even five minutes - utilizing those few moments when you find yourself willing or even desiring just to take a break from the daily grind to observe your mind rather than drifting off into daydreams.