We are not noble by birth. We are noble only by virtue of the way we think, speak, and act.

If we want to reconcile with our family or with friends who have hurt us, we have to take care of ourselves first. If we’re not capable of listening to ourselves, how can we listen to another person? If we don’t know how to recognise our own suffering, it won’t be possible to bring peace and harmony into our relationships.

We produce ourselves, we product our own future. We have to offer our best thoughts, speech and actions. Mindfulness helps us to know whether we're producing the right thing for future and helps us remember that what we produce is us, is our continuation.

No one can be by himself or herself alone. We have to inter-be, connected with everyone and everything else.

We transmit our thoughts, speech and actions - collectively known as our karma to our children and to the world, that is our future.

As a tender baby, we have arms and feet, but we can’t use them. We need someone to take care of us. With original fear comes original desire. There is the fear of being left alone and there is the desire to survive. Even when we’ve grown up to be an adult, the original fear and original desire are still there.

When our mind is carried away by strong pain, it helps to go back to our relaxed and peaceful in-breath and out-breath. Eventually, when our painful feeling comes back, we accept it as it is instead of letting it carry us away and make us more agitated.

At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, How strange—all beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, and to be free, yet they don’t know it and they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.

Contemplating a beautiful sunrise, you’re not distracted by thinking about the past or the future. The more concentrated you become, the more you see the beauty all around you. So concentration is a source of happiness.