As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Sticking with uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.

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

The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.

Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought.

When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.

Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back.

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.

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.