7 Quotes by Ethan Nichtern

Love requires learning to love ourselves in the mirror, and learning to look other people in the eye. Buddhism, in turn, asks us to pause and look at even the subtlest causal connections and take our appreciation of them to greater depths.

There’s a bumper sticker that says, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Anyone who never gets angry when he sees their friends and loved ones doing things that are harmful to themselves or others has to be pretty numb to the deep sadness of suffering. Anyone who just walks on by when she sees humans being treated like objects needs to take a second look. And a third one.

If we long to save the whole world but we can’t deal with our own family and friends, something has gone wrong in our understanding of what it means to be human.

When we get overwhelmed by the larger moral implications of our work, we overlook the smaller, more imperceptible effects of our labor. Interdependence is about the little things you do. It’s not just what you produce, but how you treat the people around you, who labor with you. And there is always something we can do that is positive – ALWAYS.

Running for the hills is not the way to go. We live in a time where there are actually fewer and fewer places left to run away to. Therefore, it’s imperative to find ways to use your energy to dive into – not run from – existing paths of livelihood. A hip-hop mogul or an oil executive are powerful already. There’s no reason they couldn’t be powerfully selfless and compassionate as well.

I often find that when I fall into the trap of speaking too harshly, it is because I don’t have enough confidence in the power of my own voice to carry sufficient strength on its own. When you realize that your speech can be powerful, you don’t need to amplify that power by making personal attacks that overgeneralize the specific feedback you are trying to give.

Here’s my personal definition of a Buddhist: someone who prioritizes cultivating her relationship to her own heartmind – and her relationship to other sentient beings – above whatever else she might achieve in life.