When Things Fall Apart

we’re out there nonaggressively working for reform, that, even if our particular issue doesn’t get resolved, we are adding peace to the world.

It’s important to remember, when we’re out there nonaggressively working for reform, that, even if our particular issue doesn’t get resolved, we are adding peace to the world.

Sitting there, standing there, we can allow the space for the usual habitual thing not to happen. Our words and actions might be quite different because we allowed ourselves time to touch and taste and see the situation first.

he feels that moving into the areas of society that he had rejected is the same as working with the parts of himself that he had rejected.

To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air.

As a result of our pain, did we know more about what it is to be human, or did we know less?

nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Our feeling that we have a lot to lose is rooted in fear—of loneliness, of change, of anything that can’t be resolved, of nonexistence