My neighbor had a loud party when what I wanted was quiet.

Am I just offering lip service to pretty ideals, or am I putting those principles into practice?

If we’re looking for a reason to come together, well, we’ve got one.

The outpouring of honesty we’ve seen is already changing our world in ways big and small, and will continue to do so. We’re also seeing a backlash to that honesty right now, and that’s normal. Truth changes us and that’s scary, but we can’t undo what’s happened either. Pandora is out of her box, and that’s something to celebrate.

The most constructive thought I’ve got right now is that we might want to learn to listen to each other better.

If we listen to each other, we might see that we share common ground. But it’s hard to listen when we’re all shouting. I don’t respond well to being yelled at. Do you?

We hurt women by trying to be what we think a man should be.

If I’m honest with myself, I can see that whatever I’m judging in another person is always reflected in me, in one way or another.

How do we know what’s true?

Here I am, patting myself on the back for my compassion as I sit in my apartment and secretly hope that my neighbor face the threat of eviction because I’m irritated by his behavior.

My first reaction to the news that United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is stepping down was shock.

Today, we are all the Buddha. Suffering is standing in front of us, in the guise of the children of those who have come seeking a better life among us, and those among us who would turn them away and tear their families asunder. That suffering is not just at the border, it’s right here, right now, with all of us, knocking on the doors of our hearts.

The story of the Buddha can help us appreciate the truth at the core of both parties.

My experience walking through thoughts of suicide.

The common thread in all human rights abuses, in all human cruelty, is believing that the person you are harming is somehow different and separate from you.

What if we as a society asked our police officers to shift their role? Police officers are sometimes called peace officers; what if we really took that seriously? What if instead of a focus on crime and punishment, the role of the police was to promote peace in whatever situation they are in?

Twitter is a wonderful place to practice the dharma—the art of accepting what is and loving in the midst of it. It’s a constant parade of suffering and people at their worst, and the trick is to make room for the suffering and love them anyway—or even because of it.

We know that you don’t treat a disease by killing the sick person, but by giving them the support they need to get better.

We may not all be rounded up and forced to leave our homes, but such inhumanity will seep into the fabric of our society to the detriment of all. Many of our neighbors are now living in terror of being cast out of the home they have known for years or decades. Is this really want the kind of country we want to live in?

It’s not easy to look over at North Korea and say: we can hurt you, you can hurt us, and we both have to live with it. That takes a great deal of humility—one virtue America is not well acquainted with. But if our leaders can find the humility to admit our shared vulnerability, that death stands with us as well as with them, perhaps we can see that they are us, and we can have peace.