Quotes About Connection

Given the chance, people will buy from people who care.

People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment.

When you get a chance to play with people - informally is one thing, but when you hook up and make something that's going to last or mean something to someone, I take it very seriously.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts. It becomes the ground for understanding others.

We could say that the word mindfulness is pointing to being one with our experience, not dissociating, being right there when our hand touches the doorknob or the telephone rings or feelings of all kinds arise. The

This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.

Be fully present. Feel your heart. And engage the next moment without an agenda.

This book stresses repeatedly that it is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others.

This can be the value of our personal suffering. We can understand firsthand that we are all in the same boat and that the only thing that makes any sense is to care for one another.

As Trungpa Rinpoche put it, "Everybody loves something, even if it's only tortillas." Bodhichitta

Cultivating absolute bodhichitta means having a relationship with the world that is nonconceptual, that is unprejudiced, having a direct, unedited relationship with reality.

Space permeates everything, every moment of our lives.

THE only reason that we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

when you have made good friends with your self, your situation will be more friendly too.

By learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear.

The Buddhist teachings tell us that over the course of many lifetimes all beings have been our mothers. At one time, all these

If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others—what and whom we can work with, and how—becomes wider.

Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

This is called maitri—developing loving-kindness and an unconditional friendship with ourselves.

Whenever we let go of holding on to ourselves and look at the world around us, whenever we connect with sorrow, whenever we connect with joy, whenever we drop our resentment and complaint, in those moments bodhichitta is here.

maitri, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.

We can use our lives, in other words, to wake up to the fact that we're not separate: the energy that causes us to live and be whole and awake and alive is just the energy that creates everything, and we're part of that. We can use our lives to connect with that, or we can use them to become resentful, alienated, resistant, angry, bitter. As always, it's up to us.