"Sometimes kindness is stepping aside, letting go of our need to be right & just being happy for someone."

"Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives."

"Loving kindness practice helps us move out of the terrain of our default narratives if they tend to be based on fear or disconnection. We become authors of brand-new stories about love."

"You can see your thoughts and emotions arise & create space for them even if they are uncomfortable."

"Whether we fear the existence of boundaries with others or crave more of them, there's no denying that individuation and separation are inevitable parts of loving relationships that become the site of tension."

"Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people."

"I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion."

"The environment we create can help heal us or fracture us. This is true not just for buildings and landscapes but also for interactions and relationships."

"While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now."

"When we don't tell those we love about what's really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories."

"In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go."

"We begin to cultivate real love for ourselves when we treat ourselves with compassion."

"When emotions are long held and extremely complex, it sometimes takes years for them to enter fully into awareness."

"Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success."

"The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love."

"Loving-kindness challenges those states that tend to arise when we think of ourselves as isolated from everyone else-fear, a sense of deficiency, alienation, loneliness."

"By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness."

"As we explore new ways of thinking, we need to be willing to investigate, experiment, take some risks with our attention, and stretch."

"Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness."

"Sanskrit has different words to describe love for a brother or sister, love for a teacher, love for a partner, love for one's friends, love of nature, and so on. English has only one word, which leads to never-ending confusion."

"The first of the four noble truths of Buddhism, that there is suffering in life, was enormously important to me. No one had ever said it out loud. That had been my experience, of course, but no one had ever talked about it. I didn't know what to do with all the fear and emotions within, and here was the Buddha saying this truth right out loud."

"Every time we forget to breathe or our minds wander or we're hijacked by feelings or sensations, we gently bring ourselves back to the breath, again and again."

"The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight."

"Respecting differences while gaining insight into our essential connected-ness, we can free ourselves from the impulse to rigidly categorize the world in terms of narrow boundaries and labels."

"For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are."

"Although love is often depicted as starry-eyed and sweet, love for the self is made of tougher stuff."

"Kindness is really at the core of what it means to be and feel alive."

"Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we're in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind."

"To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love."

"The more we practice mindfulness, the more alert we become to the cost of keeping secrets."

"It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view. When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades. The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.Its never too late to take a moment to look."

"Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself."

"Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty."

"I think we spend so much of our lives trying to pretend that we know what's going to happen next. In fact we don't. To recognize that we don't know even what will happen this afternoon and yet having the courage to move forward - that's one meaning of faith."

"Feelings of apathy as they relate to our relationships often stem from insufficiently paying attention to those around us."

"Mindfulness helps us to set boundaries by revealing what makes us unhappy & what brings us peace."

"Asking questions is an opportunity for creativity and personal expression, both for the person asking and the person answering."

"There's no denying that it takes effort to set the intention to see our fundamental connected-ness with others."

"Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self."

"With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be."

"Through meditation we come to know that we are dying & being reborn in every moment."

"There is no conflict between loving others deeply and living mindfully."

"Seeking is endless. It never comes to a state of rest, it never ceases."

"Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition."

"We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we."

"We truly can reconfigure how we see ourselves and reclaim the love for ourselves that we're innately capable of."

"Living in a story of a limited self-to any degree-is not love."

"We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on."

"Mindfulness is the agent of our freedom. Through mindfulness we arrive at faith we grow in wisdom & we attain equanimity."

"The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known-even by ourselves."