we grab onto things to find pleasure or frustration, something, anything, to engage our feelings and thoughts.

Nothing binds us but the habituated mind.

We often don’t find our breath or our body interesting enough to bring our wholehearted attention to them—but wait until we are breathing our last breath!

The thing about reality is that there’s no later, there’s no next moment when one is going to be enlightened, when one is going to understand nonbeing, where there’s no outside, no second moment—only infinite first moments arising as now.

Emptiness also means complete. Because our true nature is not the particular form we take in each moment, we say our true nature is formless. We are both a particular form, and we are free from that form. Therefore, we exist as all possibilities, as the entire universe.

There’s a point where we say it’s too hard; it shouldn’t be this hard, whatever it is.

The wish to respond differently must be as deep and strong as the habitual response. The path to that depth arises from seeing, again and again, how we repeat ourselves—and vowing to do it differently.

We learn that our resistance strengthens whatever we want to avoid.

Simply going with conditions allows our mind to remain calm and ready for whatever may happen next.