“ Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath. ”

“ The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. 'Death is perfectly safe,' I like to say. ”

“ My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too. ”

“ When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification. ”

“ It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed. ”

“ As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness. ”

“ We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others' needs at some level or other. ”

“ When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities. ”

“ Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom. ”

“ You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here. ”