compassion

The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patternsof fear & jealousy.

I've never known someone to become more at home in his or her own body, in all of its flaws and its grace, without becoming more compassionate to all of life.

By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, Throw me out! But instead of throwing her out, he seized her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain.Anyone who has failed to benefit from the Devil__ gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas__ fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina__ letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.

Allowance (non-judgmental, non-resistance to what Is) is a two-way street; our reaction to everyone and everything moving toward us and our reaction to our response moving forward...

Heal yourself, heal the world. To change our world, we must heal and open our hearts.

Appetite is the beast in man, compassion is his spirit.

Enlightenment is the moment when you are most alive and most compassionate.

Their lives revolved around evil acts; some within their control, and some not. Some of them weren__ born with the capacity for kindness, and others found it better to spare no compassion for anyone in this cruel world because they felt none would be given to them. Fate deals a bad hand to some folks. Some people are just doomed to be no good.

It is Christlike to assume that people are trying to do the best they can. I know I am a better person when I cultivate empathy, and I have been blessed for having received it from others. As members of the body of Christ, we are each responsible for creating a space not only of acceptance, but of joy and encouragement for our sisters and brothers and the stories they are working so hard to live well.

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

It was the last time I would ever do that.

In our day, there are stresses and fractures of the human-animal bond, and some forces at work would sever it once and for all. They pull us in the wrong direction and away from the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy. Especially within the last two hundred years, we've come to apply an industrial mind-set to the use of animals, too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce and the raw material of science, agriculture, and wildlife management. Here, as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can--forgetting to ask whether we should.

No one consciously chooses addiction to a substance or behavior over his partner. There are always reasons _ powerful ones _ why a person retreats into addiction.

Wake up wild one! Your mind is a cageless bird waiting to fly to uncharted lands. Like the phoenix, you'll rise again with renewed vigor, clarity, compassion and insight.

You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant... If I don't help them, who will?

There's just no time for hatred. It's lazy and destructive. We can all do better. Our world needs us to.I love you.

Ultimately humanity is one, and this small planet is our only home. If we're to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism and compassion.

The Goddess spoke to all the dead. She was beloved for it. It seemed she passed on that gift to you. Oh, it taxed her immensely, but she tried to set as many to rest as she could. Sometimes it only takes one word of kindness, you know, to set a soul at ease.