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Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that's the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human being ought to be entitled to feel.

The essence of the Way is detachment.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Is detachment the answer to freedom? No, because detachment is negative - it is to be without. The answer must be positive - I must replace what I have with something better.

Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester.

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.

Love and pain become one in the same in the eyes of a wounded child.

I do know that detachment is important. A surgeon can't be weeping into the open wound.

Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief.

That mystic clasp of love lies not on the threshold but at the end of spiritual life, and can be reached for the most part only after much spiritual exercising, many denials, self-denials, watchings, and, it may be, the Cross of pain and disillusionment.