When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Wise Buddhist teachings. Will revisit this one

"We awaken this bodhichitta, this tenderness for life, when we can no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. In the words of the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, "You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion."

"The poet Jalaluddin Rumi writes of night travelers who search the darkness instead of running from it, a companionship of people willing to know their own fear. Whether it's in the small fears of a job interview or the unnameable terrors imposed by war, prejudice, and hatred; whether it's in the loneliness of a widow or the horrors of children shamed or abused by a parent, in the tenderness of the pain itself, night travelers discover the light of bodhichitta."

"The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding in a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been."

"In what do we take refuge? Do we take refuge in small, self-satisfied actions, speech, and mind? Or do we take refuge in warriorship, in taking a leap, in going beyond our usual safety zones?"

"Do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn't matter at all"