“When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.”

Instead of automatically falling into habitual patterns, we can begin to notice how we react when someone praises us. When someone blames us, how do we react? When we’ve lost something, how do we react? When we feel we’ve gained something, how do we react? When we feel pleasure or pain, is it as simple as that? Do we just feel pleasure or pain? Or

If today the instruction is to put everything on the right, one does that as impeccably as one can. When tomorrow the instruction is to put everything on the left, one does that with one’s whole heart. The idea of one right way sort of dissolves into the mist.

the point is still to lean toward the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than to protect ourselves from it.

We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings. When you do tonglen on the spot, simply breathe in and breathe out, taking in pain and sending out spaciousness and relief.

To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion for others.

whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that’s been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time.

Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength.

When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.