“To be able to put oneself in another’s position, to be able to see and to feel as another person does, this is the rare gift of an earnest spiritual seeker.”

“Look carefully at what is of value in others and respect that.”

“To be able to put oneself in another’s position, to be able to see and to feel as another person does, this is the rare gift of an earnest spiritual seeker.”

“Time spent in meditation is as precious as gold.”

“The president is not at all like the powerful icon I imagined her to be. She’s more like I remember Amma: small and delicate with a sari that dances behind her as she walks. Of course, the president is clad in white, the color that shows eternal mourning of a lost child, while Amma never wore white. She wore reds and oranges and deep greens. Colors of celebration, of happiness. Perhaps she wears white now. Now that I am dead to her.”

“But I was beginning to feel like it all fit together, the same way everything in the bowl ends up in the bisquits, as Amma would say.”

“Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within.”

“The Awakened One sees the observer and the observed as one. The unawakened one sees the observer and the observed as different.”

“Rebuilding relationship requires a lifelong discipline and commitment.”

“forgiveness happens when you know that the other is not responsible.”

“My mother was lost to me, but I wasn’t lost. She had anchored me, to Amma, my father, Link, Gatlin, before she left. I felt her in the streets, my house, the library, even the pantry.”