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

We're constantly waking up to what we're about, what we're really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that's painful. But there's no possibility of freedom without this pain.

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.

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

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

In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.

Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.

We are just living this moment; we don't have to live 150,000 moments at once. We are only living one. That's why I say you might as well practice with each moment.

To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.

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

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.

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.

It doesn't make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn't we trust them instead of being afraid of them?

Depression is always in the details.

Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision.

Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature!

I think it is important to know how to teach new material to help young people grow and learn.

Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.