Via Daily Dharma: Unquenchable Effort

The most important thing is to keep working for the world we long for, even when the odds seem overwhelming. After all, isn’t this the essence of the bodhisattva’s vow that many of us have recited again and again? All beings are numberless, I vow to save them.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, “With Eyes in All Directions”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 4, 2018 🍁

You would not have taken birth on this particular plane of existence unless you had work to do in the areas of life and death, or rather security of your separateness, anxiety about it, lust, greed, power. Those are the prerequisites for your taking birth on this plane.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Letting Go to Gain it All

Whenever you see yourself identifying with anything stressful and inconstant, you remind yourself that it’s not-self: not worth clinging to, not worth calling yourself. This helps you let go of it. When you do this thoroughly enough, it can lead to awakening.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “There is no self.”

Via Daily Dharma: Pain’s Hidden Virtue

The gateway to compassion and lovingkindness is to be able to feel our own pain, and the pain of others. If we are able to open in this way, our hearts can melt, and the healing salve of compassion can anoint all our wounds.

—Lama Palden, “The Gateway to Compassion”

Via Daily Dharma: Divine Messengers

People who are awake see the manifestation of the dharma in everything. A pebble, a bamboo tree, the cry of a baby, anything can be the voice of the dharma calling. We should be able to practice like that.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Three Gems”

Via Daily Dharma: Natural Perfection

Not being aware of your own faults is the greatest fault. But if you are aware and make adjustments immediately, you can then be faultless at all times and everywhere.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “How to Be Faultless”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 31, 2018 🍁

In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Bring Everything onto the Path

Everything is an occasion for the dharma to unfold. It is a virtual truism that no circumstance is not apt, to the attentive mind, for spiritual growth, from abject poverty and tragedy to joy and surfeit.

—Neil Gordon, “Children and Dharma: An Introduction”

Via Daily Dharma: The End of Suffering

If we can learn to understand [our] suffering and open to the reality of it, then instead of simply being overwhelmed by it, we can investigate its causes and begin to let them go.

—Joseph Goldstein, “Facing the Heat”

Via Daily Dharma: Compassion in Action

We must join hearts and minds—with each other, with those of other faiths, and with those of a secular orientation—to bring forth the kind of world that corresponds to our deepest moral aspirations.

—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “A Call to Conscience”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 28, 2018 🍁

Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Nothing to Improve

Meditation is a haven away from the ubiquitous world of self-improvement. It’s not just that there’s no such thing as “bad” meditation, but there’s no such thing as “good” meditation either. It is what it is.

—Barry Evans, “The Myth of the Experienced Meditator”

Via Daily Dharma: Plant Seeds with Care

If we act constructively, happiness will ensue; if we act destructively, problems will result… We create the causes by our actions, and we experience their results.

—Ven. Thubten Chodron, “What Is Karma?”

Via NPR: 'You Are Safe Now': Matthew Shepard Laid To Rest At National Cathedral

Via Daily Dharma: Radical Regeneration

Buddhist practice and the work of nonviolence can never be separated. They are fused together with spiritual insight and dedicated action and enlivened by a continuous alchemy for regeneration.

—Wendy Johnson, “An Alchemy for Regeneration”

Via Daily Dharma: Keep It Real

Effort is more important than so-called success because effort is a real thing.

—Brad Warner, “Think Not Thinking”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - October 24, 2018 🍁

There is a lovely story of a boy who goes to a Zen Master and asks, “Master, I know you have many students, but if I study harder than all the rest of them, how long will it take me to get enlightened?”

The master said, “Ten years.”

The boy said, “Well, if I work day and night and double my efforts, how long will it take?”

The master said, “Twenty years.”

Now the boy talked of further achievement and the master said, “Thirty years.”

The boy replied, “Why do you keep adding years?”

And the master answered, “Since you will have one eye on the goal, there will only be one eye left to have on the work. And it will slow you down immeasurably.”

- Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma: Meaning in the Mundane

[Our] ordinary struggles are the practice, in the midst of which we come to understand and appreciate the meaning of life.

—Interview with Socho Koshin Ogui by Clark Strand, “Ordinary Struggles”

Via Daily Dharma: Freedom from Craving

The more we generate inner freedom from attachment, the less “room” there will be for craving in our mental landscape.

—Matthieu Ricard, “Working With Desire”