Quotes About Empathy

Our ability to connect with others is innate, wired into our nervous systems, and we need connection as much as we need physical nourishment.

Once someone appears to us primarily as an object, kindness has no place to root.

We find greater lightness & ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves & other beings.

When we don't tell those we love about what's really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories.

Sometimes kindness is stepping aside, letting go of our need to be right & just being happy for someone.

over time, offering loving kindness to all beings everywhere, including ourselves, unites us to one another so that we know that we can not go forward forgetting those left behind. Page 62

Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta flows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.

Can you revise your perceptions to see the world in terms of suffering and the end of suffering, instead of good and bad? To see the world in terms of suffering and the end of suffering is Buddha-mind, and will lead us away from righteousness and anger. Get in touch with your own Buddha-mind, and you will uncover a healing force of compassion.

If we truly loved ourselves, we'd never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.

Self-compassion is like a muscle. The more we practice flexing it, especially when life doesn't go exactly according to plan (a frequent scenario for most of us), the stronger and more resilient our compassion muscle becomes.

In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.

Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That's life. That's human nature.

Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition.

We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.

Cultivating loving kindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself.

With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others.

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.

Trying to impose our personal agenda on someone else's experience is the shadow side of love, while real love recognizes that life unfolds at its own pace.

If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation. The world needs us. It doesn't deplete us to give.

The Dalai Lama has said: "My religion is kindness." If we all adopted such a stance and embodied it in thought and action, inner and outer peace would be immediate, for in reality they are never not present, only obscured, waiting to be discovered. This is the work and the power of lovingkindness, the embrace that allows no separation between self, others, and events—the affirmation and honoring of a core goodness in others and in oneself.

The Buddha actually described at some length what he meant by being a good friend in the world. He talked about a good friend as someone who is constant in our times of happiness and also in our times of adversity or unhappiness. A friend will not forsake us when we are in trouble nor rejoice in our misfortune. The Buddha described a true friend as being a helper, someone who will protect us when we are unable to take care of ourselves, who will be a refuge to us when we are afraid.

There is no reason for a feeling of separation from anything or anyone, because we have been it all and done it all. How then can we feel self-righteous or removed from anyone or any action? Ther is no spot on this earth where we have not laughed, cried, been born and died. So in some sense, every single place we go is home. Everyone we meet we know. Everything that is done we are capable of.

It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion.

Kindness is really at the core of what it means to be and feel alive.