All the quotes
Whatever you experience will become an object for contemplation.
This is where the practice really begins.
It is the fruit which arises as samadhi matures.
Buddhist meditation, personal insight,
is central to the Buddha’s advice — not ritual or belief.
We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.
One will never come to see Dhamma by means of rational thinking.
Every step is on the path.
We can just allow things to be the way they are.
Even if you are stressed out,
you can allow it,
you can let it be the way it is.
Let things be
just as they are.
All conditioned things are impermanent.
Work out your own salvation with diligence.
All I do
is refrain from grasping after what is not real.
You are your own teacher.
Investigate yourself to find the truth —
inside, not outside.
Knowing yourself is most important.
I teach only one thing — dukkha and the end of dukkha.
Those who think ‘this is me’, this is mine’,
are on the path of suffering.
When your thoughts go wandering,
just sit there and let them go,
but don’t go with them.
Keep sitting.
Each human being is quite capable of realizing
ultimate reality,
immortal truth,
and yet not one of us is capable
of proving it to anyone else.
Transform anger with kindness
and evil with good,
meanness with generosity,
and deceit with integrity.
Loving-kindness [metta]
is a skillful way of enduring
what we would not normally endure.
The significance of the Buddhist teaching lies in the fact that
it’s not an attempt to tell us how things should be,
it’s more a way of bringing our attention to the way things are.
The real challenge lies in just being able to
integrate this awareness into the most ordinary things.
‘Mystical experience’, the ‘insight’ …
all the ways of talking about
that realisation of the deathless reality …
is indescribable.
Happiness means feeling you are on the right path every moment.
You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path in order to be happy.
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world
but leads us deeper into it.
Deluded people don’t realize that their own mind is the Buddha.
They keep searching outside.
Stuff we create in our own mind — that’s what dukkha is.
Here in the world,
anger is never pacified by anger.
It is pacified by love.
This is the eternal truth.
When covered by seeing, hearing, touching, and thinking,
the brightness of original mind cannot be seen.
The Buddha taught that
greed, anger, and misunderstanding are the causes that give rise to suffering.
If we ourselves are not yet acquainted with
greed, anger, and misunderstanding, then there is no way we can believe this.
When we know ourselves what
greed, anger and delusion are like,
and that whenever they arise in the mind,
they produce suffering like a fire burning us,
then we can believe it on the basis of our own experience.
Playing with words and ideas is like trying to catch rain in buckets.
Just allow your consciousness to receive the rain,
and the seeds buried deep within will have a chance to be watered.
Today is a new day.
Yesterday is a memory.
Tomorrow is the unknown.
Now is the knowing.
That which is threatening to the ego is liberating to the heart.
I realize all forms are but illusions.
I thus free myself from the illness of ego-clinging.
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
Watch what happens when
you don’t name an experience as bad
and instead bring an inner acceptance, an inner YES to it,
and so let it be as it is.
He who binds to himself a joy,
Doth the winged life destroy,
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
All is flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice.
Change alone is unchanging.
Just remain in the center; watching.
And then forget that you are there.
In your patience, you will own your heart.
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking.
It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
Whenever the mind wants to grab on to something as a sure thing,
just say, ‘It’s not sure, it’s transient’.
As rain does not break into a well-thatched house,
so craving does not break into a well-trained mind
If you teach others, do what you teach.
To train others, train yourself.
Self-control is not easy.
Detach, let go.
Whenever there is any feeling of clinging,
we detach from it
because we know that feeling is just as it is.
All delusions begin in the mind.
All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves
and then believing what we are saying.
When life is sweet,
say thank you and celebrate.
When life is bitter,
say thank you and grow.
These loves, hates, frustrations etc, unpleasant as they seem,
are the essential manure out of which the lotus of enlightenment grows and blossoms.
Instead of becoming the world’s expert on Buddhism,
just let go, let go, let go.
When there is mindfulness and right understanding,
then I can’t find any suffering at all in this moment, now.
Keeping the body in good health is a duty.
Otherwise we will not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
There is no way that we can guarantee that anything is definitely like this or like that, so the Buddha said to just leave it be. Leave it be as uncertain. However much you like it or dislike it, you should understand it as uncertain.
Just remain in the center; watching.
And then forget that you are there.
As a bee gathering nectar
does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower;
so do the wise move through the world.
We practise Buddhism until we have a feeling for it.
After a time, a new kind of understanding arises.
The Buddha’s teachings are like the instructions posted on a hotel room door,
telling you what to do when the hotel’s on fire.
We stand in our own shadow
and wonder why it is dark.
Our brain is like a wild, raging electrical storm that wondrously enables us to make our way.
Rather than being your thoughts and emotions,
be the awareness behind them.
Like a cup, you are full
of your own opinions and speculations.
How can you learn wisdom
unless you first empty your cup?
The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Leave the front and back door open
allow the thoughts to come and go
just don’t serve them tea.
When it storms outside, feel free to watch.
You don’t need to open the window.
No matter what happens when you practice,
your practice is meditation.
If you watch thoughts,
that is meditation.
If you can’t watch your thoughts,
that is meditation, too.
Spirituality for me is recognizing that I am connected to the energy of all creation, that I am a part of it and it is always a part of me. Whatever label or word we use to describe “it” doesn’t matter. Words are completely inadequate.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Every religion is true one way or another.
It is true when understood metaphorically.
But when it get stuck in its own metaphors,
interpreting them as facts,
then you are in trouble.
I dedicate my body and mind, my whole life, to the pracice of the Lord Buddha’s teachings in their entirety. I will realize the truth in this lifetime … I will let go of everything and follow the teachings. No matter how much suffering and difficulty I have to endure I will perservere, otherwise there will be no end to my doubts.
I will make this life as even and continuous as a single day and night. I will abandon attachments to mind and body and follow the Buddha’s teachings until I know their truth for myself.
“Right effort” is not the effort to make something particular happen.
It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment.
If we wish to understand the nature of reality,
we have an inner hidden advantage:
we are ourselves little portions of the universe
and so carry the answer within us.
Freedom from craving brings many incidental benefits.
If you had not suffered as you have,
there would be no depth to you as a human being,
no humility, no compassion.
Love is not liking somebody.
Anyone can do that.
Love is loving things
that sometimes you don’t like.
All teachings are mere references.
The true experience is living your own life.
page revised: 15 June 2018