... ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this useful’?

Our entire lives are governed by a voice in our heads. This voice is engaged in a ceaseless stream of thinking—most of it negative, repetitive, and self-referential.

The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

The ego thrives on drama. It keeps our old resentments and grievances alive through compulsive thought.

“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

As best I could understand it, the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.

We suffer because we get attached to people and possessions that ultimately evaporate.

The route to true happiness was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens.

This is where the Buddhists diverged quite dramatically from self-help: They had an actual, practical program. It wasn’t expensive gimcrackery. No spendy seminars, no credit cards required. It was totally free.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it.

We can do more than just think; we also have the power simply to be aware of things—without judgment, without the ego. This is not to denigrate thinking, just to say that thinking without awareness can be a harsh master.

Picture the mind like a waterfall, they said: the water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions; mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall.

RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification

Bingo: respond not react.

Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.”

The real superpower of meditation is not just to manage your ego more mindfully but to see that the ego itself has no actual substance. Close your eyes and look for it, and you won’t find any “self” you can put your finger on.

Our life is the manifestation of our minds.

The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

The brain, it turns out, is constantly changing in response to experience. It’s possible to sculpt your brain through meditation just as you build and tone your body through exercise—to grow your gray matter the way doing curls grows your bicep.

The brain, the organ of experience, through which our entire lives are led, can be trained. Happiness is a skill.

Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else.

Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

“Practice of compassion is ultimately benefit to you. So I usually describe: we are selfish, but be wise selfish rather than foolish selfish.”

This clunky phrase “nonattachment to results” was my long-sought Holy Grail, the middle path, the marriage of “the price of security” and “the wisdom of insecurity.”

1. Don’t Be a Jerk 2. When Necessary, Hide the Zen 3. Meditate 4. The Price of Security Is Insecurity—Until It’s Not Useful 5. Equanimity Is Not the Enemy of Creativity 6. Don’t Force It 7. Humility Prevents Humiliation 8. Go Easy with the Internal Cattle Prod 9. Nonattachment to Results 10. What Matters Most?

Nonattachment to results + self compassion = a supple relentlessness that is hard to match. Push hard, play to win, but don’t assume the fetal position if things don’t go your way.

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.

It is better to win ten times 1-0 than to win once 10-0.

The best way to detoxify is to stop putting toxic things into the body and depend upon it's own mechanisms.

Pretty much every gym I go into, I feel very comfortable. I dump my stuff, take my shoes off, do my thing.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.

Just as with a guitar you can improvise a guitar solo and theyd probably be similar each time but they wont be exactly the same. With the word its probably a bit freer than that. I probably repeat myself more musically than I do verbally.

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

We need to build on what we know works - local oversight of schools to keep a check on performance, timely interventions in schools to support those at risk of failing, and partnerships between schools to help each one to improve.

When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them.

I wonder if some artists determine their entire identity through that which they create. How dangerous! Imagine if they were to stop creating!

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.

I also appreciate the lasting friendships I've made while working with our great sponsors through the years, including Miller Lite, Shell and Dodge.

I don't eat out much. I eat mostly home food and no carbs after 5 P.M. You are what you eat, and Sunday used to be my cheat day, when I could eat chocolate; but there are no cheats to a good body. Now, I don't give in.

One thing I was thinking about the other day was you can't even conceive of the kinds of things you can do in movies today. The idea that you could draw, in a computer, dinosaurs and have them running around was totally impossible.

That was very difficult for me on 'American Idol' to feel like I had to be a certain way. It wasn't that the producers were saying that you shouldn't be gay or whatever, but there was this unspoken energy around saying you have to appeal to Middle America, and Middle America at that point was not ready for all that.

The truest wild beasts live in the most populous places.

Racism is if there are spectators or, outside the field of play, there are movements to discrimination, but, on the field of play, I deny that there is racism.

I'm not on Facebook. I have a sort of anonymous account that I check, like, once every six months every time Facebook rolls out a new feature.

In Boston they have gone from large autonomous high schools to smaller schools within the same building.

I am beautiful.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.