Life is a second-by-second miracle.

We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.

But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.

With unfailing kindness, your life always presents what you need to learn. Whether you stay home or work in an office or whatever, the next teacher is going to pop right up.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.

Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.

There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.

Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.

George Bush isn't Hitler. He could be if he applied himself.

His mercy, not our merits, make[s] us his.

There are very little things in this life I cannot afford and patience is one of them.

My sin burdened me heavily. But when I measured it against Your Grace, O Lord, Your forgiveness came out greater.

We are cruel when someone refuses to play the role in which we have cast him. We judge a person only according to his relationship towards us.

Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time.

Training is the key to keep people from getting hurt.

I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter.

I am gonna go into my coaching badges after my England days are finished and I have the time on my international break.