Sometimes I think the only thing worth saying is “I love you.

The Buddha’s criteria for Wise Speech include – in addition to the obvious expectation that speech be truthful – that it be timely, gentle, motivated by kindness, and helpful.

My redeemer is always the person next to me.

If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.

Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What’s happening right now and what’s coming up in me in response to what’s happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.

People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives-materialism and consumerism-doesn’t work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart. And an unhappy world.

Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you’ve had a rough day.

Steadfast benevolence, sustained by the wisdom that anything other than benevolence is painful, protects the mind from all afflictions.

The voice of Thich Nhat Hanh-friendly, patient, steadfast, confident, contemporary, and often witty-seems, to me, an intermediary big brother talking directly to me on every page saying, ‘Look! It’s right there in you,’ the very wisdom that leads to compassion.

The prohibition of L’shon Hara is the Jewish equivalent of the Buddhist practice of Right Speech.