Quotes from Stephen Levine

When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone's pain, it become compassion.

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)

How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)

I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were 'I love you.' There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26)

Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let's take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132)

That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)

I have seem even those who have long since abjured God die in grace. . . . Atheists don't use their drying to bargain for a better seat at the table; indeed they may not even believe supper is being served. They are not storing up 'merit.'; They just smile because their heart is ripe. They are kind for no particular reason; they just love.

Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn't matter if you're going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25)

Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind. (34)

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

To heal is to touch with love that which was previously touched by fear.

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.

In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same -- Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.

I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)

Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)

healing comes not from being loving but from being itself. It is not a case of being clear but of clear being. This healing is not about anything else but being itself. Nothing separate, no edges, nothing to limit healing. Entering, in moments, the realm of pure being, the gateless gate swings open-- beyond life and death, our original face shines back at us.

forgiveness is not a condoning of the unskillful act which has caused injury, but a touching of the actor with mercy and loving kindness.

It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.

Our addiction to always being right is a great block to the truth. It keeps us from the kind of openness that comes from confidence in our natural wisdom.

When we turn to our innate wisdom for the harmony of mind and gut, we heal the entrance to the heart as it seeks to beat in rhythm with the world.

You can call it wisdom, or sanity, or health, or enlightenment. I use the word God as a short-cut. I am comfortable with the word God because I don't have the foggiest idea of what it means.

When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.