Sylvia Boorstein, PhD

Nothing is so terrible that we can’t continue to cultivate our compassion and deepen our wisdom—even when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

In this Dharma talk, Sylvia Boorstein explores the quiet, radical transformation that long-term practice invites—not through grand revelations, but through deepening kindness and attention. She shares stories from her life—of family, teaching, aging, and vulnerability—that illuminate how practice shapes the heart over time. “What’s changed about you?” her husband once asked. “I got kinder,” she replied. This, she says, is the fruit of practice: “habituating the heart to kindness, because it’s the wisest thing to do.”

The only thing that makes sense is kindness. Equanimity in the mind really depends on having enough balance to know that whatever is happening now is not happening because of yesterday. It's happening because of everything that has ever happened in this whole world. Every individual is heir to their own karma. There are no enemies and no villains—this is just life unfolding, and the only thing we can do is to be kind. We can be kind to ourselves and everybody we meet so that in this whole pained world, we don't add any fuel to the fire of enmity.