This question is sometimes a difficult one to answer even if we are talking about ourselves. Self-reflection is not something we do every day but it is something we should do. Why do we do the things we do? Do we think or react? Is what we do, who we are? So many things go into how we live every day, knowing the why is just as important.

Each month, one quote is added to the top of the page (from that month's graduate meeting) and as other new quotes come in, they are added to the very bottom of this page.

For most of the quotes below, clicking on the artwork above will take you to the "host" page where that quote appears and clicking the artwork again from the host page will return you to the quotes page.

Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others;

rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other.

- Parker Palmer -

Once or twice a year the abbot at the San Francisco Zen Center,

Tenshin Reb Anderson, comes to speak with the hospice volunteers.  

One night he gave a talk that included the best advice I've ever heard on caregiving.

He said simply, "Stay close and do nothing."

That's how we try to practice at Zen Hospice Project.  

We stay close and do nothing. We sit still and listen to the stories.

- Frank Ostaseski -

Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be.

Not the saint you're striving to become.

But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.

All of you is holy.

You're already more and less than whatever you can know.

Breathe out, look in, let go.

- John Welwood-

If we keep our attention focused on the present, we can be sure of one thing,

namely that whatever we are attending to in this moment will change,

giving us the opportunity to practice accepting whatever it is

that will emerge in the next moment.

Clearly, there is wisdom in cultivating acceptance.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn -

Explanation:

to not go near anything hot