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 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.
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 gets 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.
Meditation is sitting quietly
while paying attention to your experience,
allowing everything to be just as it is.
Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way they are, right here and now.
we are stardust
we are golden
we are billion year old carbon
and we got to get ourselves
back to the garden
When you don’t have anything else, you have your breath.
Where does buddha dharma sangha live? In your heart.
Whenever you are thinking, or stressing, or in the grip of an emotion — or being anything at all — just stop, and do this:
ana = “breathe in”
pana = “breathe out”
sati = “be in the present”, “pay attention”
Then: Do your work. (“Do your duty”).
And always: Metta first.
One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
With mindfulness, you learn to look at things from an existential point of view — allowing things to exist — rather than trying to even them out or bulldoze the whole landscape. With this view, fighting or resistance isn’t necessary.
It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along.
Nirvana is a natural condition which has two aspects — the state of mind that is free from defilements and thus cool, while the body and sense faculties are not cool, and the state of mind wherein the sense faculties have cooled down.
A loss ain’t a loss, it’s a lesson.
Appreciate the pain, it’s a blessing.
The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey
is the step that you are taking at this moment.
That’s all there ever is.
Meditation. There is nothing to do. It is about undoing.
If you have time to breathe, you have time to meditate. You breathe when you walk. You breathe when you stand. You breathe when you lie down.
Meditation is a skillful letting go: gently but with resolution.
When operating on a personal level — from how things should be — it seems that life is always a struggle.
The way out of suffering is meditation itself.
Let go of the story — and return to the only place of power: the present moment
When one does not understand death, life can be very confusing.
Realization of Nibbana is not a wipe-out or a destruction of the conditioned realm;
it’s an understanding of it.
Truly, just sit …
That’s all there is.
If you give it attention, there is no limit to delusion.
So quit creating delusions and just sit.
There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.
In sitting meditation we practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves.
Meditation isn’t about getting it right or attaining some ideal state.
It’s about being able to stay present with ourselves.
One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
The spiritual journey is, in essence, from distraction to awakening, and also from the personal to the universal. … In this ‘going forth’ the heart opens and self-concern is realized as the shadow of concern for the welfare of all – “What can I gain from my practice, my efforts?” is replaced by, “What can I offer?”
Row row row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily merrily merrily merrily
life is but a dream.
[When we are upset, sad, etc … we can remember]
we are the observers of the conditions —
we are not the conditions themselves.
Whenever you are able to observe your mind,
you are no longer trapped in it.
By giving your full attention to this moment,
an intelligence far greater than the egoic mind enters your life.
The source of all suffering is delusion.
‘All conditioned things are not-self’ —
when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.
This is the path to purification.
When you are present,
you can allow the mind to be as it is
without getting entangled in it.
We try many ways to be awake,
but our society still keeps us forgetful.
Meditation is to help us remember.
Just as the dog loves to chew bones,
the human mind loves its problems.
The one and only way
for the purification of beings,
for overcoming sorrow and lamentation,
for the complete destruction of pain and distress,
for attainment of the Noble Path, and
for the realization of Nibbāna,
is the practice of the four methods of Steadfast Mindfulness:
Keeping our mind steadfastly
on the body,
on sensation,
on the mind,
on the dhamma.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Change in the world comes from individuals, from the inner peace in individual hearts. Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
All the traditions in Buddhism have their own unique aspects.
But in essence, we are all students of the same teacher.
Happiness is lighter than a feather,
no one can grasp it.
Suffering is heavier than the earth,
no one can let it go.
One conscious breath is enough to make some space
where before there was the uninterrupted succession of one thought after another.
One conscious breath (two or three would be even better), taken many times a day,
is an excellent way of bringing space into your life.
Looking within can change the world around you.
One thing I teach: dukkha and release from dukkha.
Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.
Why meditate? You start to unhook the automatic cycle of reactivity and gain some freedom.
Dukkha is the pain of not realising our true nature.
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
But after that I contemplated my attitude; I contemplated my greed for peace. And I did not seek tranquillity any more.
Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen.
It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment.
What a liberation to realize that the voice in my head is not who I am.
Who am I then?
The one who sees that.
If my mind doesn’t go out to disturb the noise,
the noise won’t disturb me.
My religion is simple.
My religion is kindness.
The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.
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.
Let go and just do your own work.
Do what you do, and give the fruit of your actions to me.
The Buddha taught that looking after the precepts isn’t hard if you look after yourself.
When you sit, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing.
The nibbana-dhamma lies in the minds of each one of you
at the moment that you are to some degree
empty of the feeling of “I” and “mine”.
Enlightenment — full enlightenment — is perceiving reality with an open, unfixated mind, even in the most difficult circumstances. It’s nothing more than that, actually.
Remember that the world happens to be as it is, and right now
that’s the only way it can be. The only thing we can do is be
patient with it.
I declare that the heart’s release by compassion,
has the sphere of infinite space for its excellence.
When your only purpose for living is the benefit of others, it is very easy to make the right decision. It is easy because you are very clear about why you are alive.
incline to the Unconditioned, the space, the emptiness, rather
than towards the changing conditions within the space.
incline to the Unconditioned, the space, the emptiness, rather
than towards the changing conditions within the space.
Rebirth is nothing more than desire
seeking some object to absorb into, which will allow it to arise again.
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
You are awareness, disguised as a person.
Every religion is true one way or another.
It is true when understood metaphorically.
But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors,
interpreting them as facts,
then you are in trouble.
You have to make your life a good place for the meditation to seep through.
You need power, only when you want to do something harmful. Otherwise love is enough to get everything done.