Meditation practice is how we discover basic goodness and learn to cultivate bodhichitta. With this view, practice, and activity, even the most mundane situation becomes a vehicle for awakening.

Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.

If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn’t inherent in the place but in your state of...

We don’t have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse.

The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It’s a way of acknowledging when we are...

IN practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite.

I dedicate the merit of the occasion to all beings. This gesture of universal friendship has been likened to a drop of fresh spring water. If we put it on a rock in the sunshine,...

A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.

Sitting meditation begins with good posture.

The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the bodhichitta teachings, the only way...

Throughout my life, until this very moment, whatever virtue I have accomplished, including any benefit that may come from this book, I dedicate to the welfare of all beings.May the roots of suffering diminish. May...

Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives.

An interesting practice that combines mindfulness and refraining is just to notice your physical movements when you feel uncomfortable.

Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation.

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

WHEN we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that because of our noble intentions everything will be okay.

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things...

Abandon hope.

The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go – qualities that are innate within us.

Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed...

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we...

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s...

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or...

We’re here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we...

When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are...

If we emphasized only precision, our meditation might become quite harsh and militant. (…). One thing that is very helpful is to cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.

The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are.

I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us…It...

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The...

Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning...

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to...

We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh,...

If the object of meditation were something concrete, something solid and graspable – an image or a statue or a dot on the floor or a candle – it would be much more of a...

What I have realized through practicing is that practice isn’t about beng the best horse or the good horse or the poor horse or the worst horse.

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.

As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve...