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

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.

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

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.

“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.”

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Joe Gibbs helped define what the Washington Redskins stand for - integrity, hard work, determination, winning and championships.

I really am not a gold fan.

Your mind is a key, and whatever it unlocks, the greatest treasure of all.

I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.

Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.

Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

The world is an enormous injustice.

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.

Sadly, half of marriages end in divorce. Half of my girl friends and male friends have been through one, and their kids are doing great. There's no shame around it - unless you want to project that on to yourself - but certainly there's no longer cultural shame. Everyone is walking through it.

The fully engaged heart is the antibody for the infection of violence.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.

People must work in unison.

People are still grasping for the miracle, and unfortunately, there are no miracles, if you do not exercise for a year, and let your body remain dormant, then you will gain weight.

Dirk is like the German Moses, invincible and inspiring. That is why 'His Name Is Dirk' must be the Official Fan Song for Dirk Nowitzki.

Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one's own.

I didn't devote my life to acting. I give a lot to my work, but my life has always been more important.

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.