“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are.” ~Maya Angelou There was a time in my life when everything felt heavy, like I was constantly carrying around a weight...

‘What of you people? Do you know yourselves? When you doubt sufficiently, your enlightenment will be sufficient.’ Bassui Tokushō

“The body keeps the score. If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people ‘feel’ what their bodies are telling them.” ~Bessel van der Kolk I used to think my body was a liar....

‘Mindfulness in words — trying to make an internal commentary of what one is doing — is just a kind of illusion.’ Trevor Leggett

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” ~W.E.B. Du Bois I was standing at the service bar, waiting for my drink order to be ready. The scent of steak fat clinging to my apron and infusing itself into my bra, while twenty-something servers around...

‘When you dream at night you see all sorts of different things. Are those things seen with the eyes? You believe you have eyes in the dream, don’t you? You walk around and look all over, yet in reality your eyes are closed and you’re in bed.’ Tulku Urgyen...

‘Just because one believes one has eyes and can therefore see does not change the fact that what one is experiencing is basically mind experience.’ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

‘We can experience pain, joy, love, and loss, but these experiences are no longer seen as happening to a self. They are simply the play of phenomena arising and dissolving in awareness.’ Everyday Buddhism

William Blake famously wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite, for man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” That purified perception, looking out into the...