comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

mindfulness made me, as an eminent spiritual teacher once said, “a connoisseur of my neuroses.”

Eating mindfully, I actually put the fork down between bites rather than hunting around the plate while I’m still swallowing. As a result, I stop eating when I’m full, as opposed to stuffing my face until I’m nearly sick, as I usually do.

“Your demons may have been ejected from the building, but they’re out in the parking lot, doing push-ups.”

If you’re never looking up, I now realized, you’re always just looking around.

Even if we were handed everything we wanted, would it really make us sustainably happy? How many times have we heard from people who got rich or famous and it wasn’t enough? Rock stars with drug problems. Lottery winners who kill themselves. There’s actually a term for this—“hedonic adaptation.” When good things happen, we bake them very quickly in

The Sufi Muslims say, “Praise Allah, but also tie your camel to the post.” In other words, it’s good to take a transcendent view of the world, but don’t be a chump.

favorite book, by an ancient sage named Shantideva.

they call Buddhism “advanced common sense”; it’s all about methodically confronting obvious-but-often-overlooked truths (everything changes, nothing fully satisfies) until something in you shifts.