If this medication helps, that will be great. If it doesn’t, no blame. It wasn’t what my body needed.” “If this doctor turns out to be responsive, that will be nice. If he or she doesn’t, that’s okay. Any given doctor is going to be how he or she is going to be. It’s not in my control.

It is a fundamental human truth, transcending cultures and traditions, that the wisest response to situations that are beyond our control, circumstances that we cannot change, is noncontention.

Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the universe?

To go into the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. – WENDELL BERRY A.

People may think you’re giving up, when in fact you are simply giving in to the reality of your new life.

Life is suffering” is misleading for at least two reasons. First, the Buddha used an ancient Indian language similar to Sanskrit called Pali, and the word he used in Pali for the first noble truth, dukkha, is difficult to translate. Dukkha is too multifaceted and nuanced a term to be captured in the one-word translation “suffering.” And second, the fact of dukkha in our lives doesn’t mean that life is only dukkha.

If I say, “I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” I’m likely to be discredited as a witness to my own condition. I’ve had doctors tell me there’s no such thing as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. One doctor said: “Just drink some coffee.

Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than they are.

People can be at their most vulnerable, but still tenacious at the same time.

I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail.