The five spiritual faculties—faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom—are our greatest friends and allies on this journey of understanding. These qualities are most powerful when they are in balance.

Meditation has to do with opening what is closed in us, balancing what is reactive, and exploring and investigating what is hidden. That is the why of practice. We practice to open, to balance, and to explore.

“Om Mani Padme Hum.”

it this way as she was washing the lunch dishes: “Isn’t it strange that we prefer the quicksand of somethingness to the firm ground of emptiness?”

abhidharma, the Buddhist system of psychology.

the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, awareness of feelings, awareness of mental phenomena, and awareness of truths, of the laws of experience.

Mindfulness is that quality of attention which notices without choosing, without preference; it is a choiceless awareness that, like the sun, shines on all things equally.

We confuse the concepts of the thinking mind with the reality of direct experience.

We attain wisdom not by creating ideals but by learning to see things clearly, as they are.