“Risk is always contextual. What’s a big deal for you might be nothing to someone else. The real danger is assuming that because you haven’t had a problem yet, you won’t have one soon.”
— G. Scott Graham, Early Warning Signals
Tags: business
“One of the great myths of meditation practice is that once it’s established, it becomes self-sustaining. That’s rarely true.”
— G. Scott Graham, Now What? After Your Vipassana Course Is Over
Tags: vipassana, vipassana-meditation
“If they aren’t asking for information, what are they asking for? They are saying they are stuck and can’t gather enough traction to get unstuck. They are saying that they are not able to choose because they lack the wherewithal to take action. They need a charge, a spark, an incentive, and they need it from within themselves. A well-placed why provides this spark. Not.”
— G. Scott Graham, Motivational Interviewing Made Easy
“Psychedelic experiences hold the potential to be deeply transformative, guiding individuals toward healing, insight, and personal growth. However, transformation is not an automatic process. It does not occur merely through the ingestion of a substance or the act of journeying—it is cultivated through engagement. True engagement requires an individual to meet the experience with openness, presence.”
— G. Scott Graham, Engagement: The Missing Component in Psychedelic Therapy
“Choose the Right Paddleboard for Stability and Performance: The width of the board directly impacts stability. Select a board that aligns with your paddling skills and your dog’s needs.”
— G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup
Tags: dog-training, paddleboarding, sup
“The wisdom of the Mangala Sutta reminds us that avoiding negative influences is not about judgment or superiority—it is about protecting your mind, your peace, and your growth.”
— G. Scott Graham, Living the Maṅgala Sutta
Tags: 38-blessings, buddhist-quotes, life-design, mangala-sutta, maṅgala-sutta
“You’re Still Here. You are not starting over. You are continuing—with a heart that remembers, a body that knows how to stay, and a soul that has said yes to life again. Grief didn’t end. Love didn’t erase it. But you remained open. You allowed joy to return, even when it felt risky. You dared to care again, even knowing what it might cost. That is your strength.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later
Tags: bereavement, grief-and-loss-quotes, grief-quotes
“I can tell you as I write this book, my grief has not lessened. My eyes have welled up so many times while sitting here at the keyboard that I had to just stop because I couldn’t see the screen.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief
Tags: grief-and-loss
“We live in a world obsessed with transformation stories. Before and after photos. Morning routine YouTube videos. Productivity hacks. #monkmode posts on social media. But those are curated realities. Not practices. Real-life wins are quiet. Private. Ordinary.”
— G. Scott Graham, Now What? After Your Vipassana Course Is Over
Tags: transformation
“Asking, ‘How is your grieving?’ could imply that there is some process to grief. There is no process. Grief, like any other emotion, just is. Asking, ‘How is your grief?’ opens the door for a conversation about the integration of grief.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Three Years Later
Tags: grief-and-loss
“Most small businesses are built on heroic effort. Someone always steps up. Someone always pulls through. That’s admirable—but it’s not scalable. Heroes burn out. Heroes leave. Heroes eventually become the bottleneck.”
— G. Scott Graham, Early Warning Signals
Tags: business, strategic-planning
“The first precept, often phrased as ‘To refrain from killing,’ can be transformed into a more expansive ideal: I honor and protect all life with kindness and compassion.”
— G. Scott Graham, Living the Eight Precepts
Tags: atthasīla, buddhist-ethics, eight-precepts, eightfold-ethical-conduct, uposatha-vows
“Even though I was in a crowd of people—people who knew me—I never felt more alone and unsupported… People somehow expect those who are grieving to reach out just like people expect those who are contemplating suicide to reach out. Know what? Isolating emotions tend to not work that way. People who are depressed withdraw. People who grieve pull away. People who are suicidal retreat.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Three Years Later
Tags: grief-and-loss
“When your life design fully integrates the blessing you are striving toward, you experience greater coherence, ease, and fulfillment. You no longer just believe in the blessing—you become it.”
— G. Scott Graham, Living the Maṅgala Sutta
Tags: 38-blessings, buddhist-quotes, life-design, mangala-sutta, maṅgala-sutta
“Most business disasters didn’t come out of nowhere. They came out of inaction. The warning lights were there. They just weren’t connected to a system that turned them into a signal.”
— G. Scott Graham, Early Warning Signals
Tags: business, strategic-planning
“Nothing you can say can make anything any better, so shut up… Don’t deny their grief. Just be there. Resist the urge to console. Be a witness. Be a witness. Be a witness. That’s what people who are grieving really need. They just want someone to shut up and be there with them. Be present. Be present. Be present.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief
Tags: grief-and-loss
“Live every day as someone who remembers what you saw on that cushion — that everything changes, that craving creates misery, that you have the capacity to respond with awareness instead of reaction.”
— G. Scott Graham, Now What? After Your Vipassana Course Is Over
Tags: vipassana, vipassana-meditation
“MDMA is not a ‘fix,’ a ‘remedy,’ or a ‘solution’ to anxiety, depression, PTSD, or grief. It is a tool that, if you choose to, makes engaging potential fixes, remedies, or solutions easier. MDMA shifts your emotional landscape enabling you to explore dark emotions, memories, and thoughts that you might not otherwise explore. MDMA creates a positive emotional engagement with those dark emotions, memories, and thoughts, so when you revisit them, as I have over these three months, your emotional connection is different.”
— G. Scott Graham, MDMA and Grief
“The fifth precept, traditionally stated as ‘To refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind,’ can be reframed into a positive and expansive ideal: I nourish my body and mind with clarity and awareness.”
— G. Scott Graham, Living the Eight Precepts
Tags: atthasīla, buddhist-ethics, eight-precepts, eightfold-ethical-conduct, uposatha-vows
“You don’t want to pour all this effort into preparation only to make a wrong turn on the day of your psychedelic experience.”
— G. Scott Graham, Psychedelic Preparation Workbook: Sixty Days to Engagement
Tags: psychedelic-preparation
“Grief, like any other emotion, is a natural part of the human experience. Grief is simply the price of admission for a life that is lived to its fullest and most profound potential. There are only two ‘problems’ with grief: when we resist it and when we fuel it.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Three Years Later
Tags: grief-and-loss
“By focusing on aspiration rather than avoidance, the precepts become a source of joy, transformation, and deep fulfillment.”
— G. Scott Graham, Living the Eight Precepts
Tags: atthasīla, buddhist-ethics, eight-precepts, eightfold-ethical-conduct, uposatha-vows
“Yathā bhūta is unflinching. It is clear-eyed. And it is essential to surviving grief with integrity.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later
Tags: grief, yathā-bhūta
“If there’s any offering in these pages, it’s this:
You don’t need to transcend your pain to be worthy of love.
You don’t need to have a clear path to keep walking.
You don’t need to have let go of the past to hold what’s here now.
You get to love again.
You get to grieve still.
You get to be afraid and hopeful and messy and grounded and undone and whole — all at once.
You get to come as you are.
Not once.
Not when you’re ‘better.’
Not after you’ve figured it all out.
Every day.
Over and over.
With whatever you’re holding.”
— G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later
Tags: grief-and-loss-quotes, grief-quotes