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.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them "thinking", and return to the breath.

It's helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing withwhatever arises, without picking and choosing.

Sitting meditation begins with good posture.

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

You can’t say you love man as an individual if you have not dealt with the person’s complex personality, his or her unfamiliar habits, disturbing impulses and biological makeup.

Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.

When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

Most bad behavior comes from insecurity.

If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then... life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction.

Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.

If I'm out in the country or something, I'm still spooked by snakes.

I'm wearing a garbage bag. I was put on my own worst-dressed list.