Because
people try to conquer others instead of gaining victory over
themselves, there are problems. The Buddha taught that one should simply
gain victory over oneself.
—Sayadaw U Pandita, "The Best Remedy"
Not coveting a single thing is the greatest gift you can give to the universe.
—Kodo Sawaki Roshi, "To You"
You
get to be at home with change. You get to be at home with uncertainty.
You get to be at home with not knowing how it all comes out. and you
make a plan knowing full well that it may be totally irrelevant a moment
later, and you’re at peace with that.
I find that when I’m at a choice point, the best thing to do is to quiet
and empty and go back to square one. But I try to stay at the choice
point as long as I can, because that’s as interesting a place as any
other place, to stay with not knowing what to do. But if you listen, it
all becomes apparent in time. Patience is good. The tolerance for not
knowing what’s what is quite an art form.
We
humans have a way of touching each other’s lives deeply even despite
ourselves. In finding our way to each other, we find what is, after all,
already there, waiting to be found, wanting to be found.
—Andrew Cooper, "Life’s Hidden Support"
We have to work diligently to keep our hearts open, just as we have to work to keep other muscles in the body strong.
—Valerie Mason-John, "Brief Teachings"
When
I begin taking care of how I suffer—how I too am greedy, angry, or
confused—then I develop my capacity to respond to those same energies in
individuals and institutions alike.
—Michael Stone, "G-20 Dharma"
In
the early stages of sadhana (spiritual work), you take your dominant
thing and you work with it. You keep doing it and doing it, and you love
it, and it gets thicker and thicker. But later on in your sadhana, for
me anyway, I began to taste freedom and yearn for it so much that I
looked and I shifted around.
There’s a point where you go towards the fire of purification, towards
the places you’re stuck. You can feel where your stuff is – what’s got
your number, and you realize that as long as there’s any aversion left
in you, you’re stuck and you end up wanting to eat your aversions.
Whatever
the circumstance, bodily movement or stillness, feeling well or
distressed, with good concentration or scattered attention, everything
can be brought back to awareness.
—Kittisaro, "Tangled in Thought"
Change is good, we’re told. A fresh breeze blown through life keeps us on our toes, fully alive until we die.
—Joan Duncan Oliver, "Love, Loss and the Grocery Store"
Our
entire lives are nothing but a chain of moments in which we perceive
one sight, taste, smell, touch, sound, feeling, or thought after
another. Outside of this process, nothing else happens.
—Cynthia Thatcher, "What’s So Great About Now?"
In the clarity of a quiet mind, there is room for all that is actually happening and whatever else might also be possible.
As we've discovered, it is possible to notice a single thought,
sensation, or situation arise, but not get totally lost in identifying
with it. We observe the cloud but remain focused on the sky, see the
leaf but hold in vision the river. We are that which is aware of the
totality. And our skills develop with practice.
First, we have to appreciate the value of such qualities of mind and
desire to develop them. Next, we have to have faith in the possibility
that we can indeed make progress. Finally, we have to explore and
practice appropriate techniques.
Twenty minutes per day of such practice can lead to results and the
incentive to go deeper still. Continuous practice brings about great
transformation of mind and leads to a new quality of service.
I
think the reason that remarkable stories of forgiveness take our breath
away is that we instantly feel the liberation in the lifting of
boundaries, the end of separation, of “inside” and “outside.”
—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, "The Seventh Zen Precept"
It
has been said, and with good reason, that dying people never wish they
had spent more time in the office. Doing matters little to the dying. As
death draws near, it is relationships—with family, with friends, with
God—that hold the greatest appeal.
—Dr. William Thomas, as quoted in C. W. Huntington, Jr.'s "The Miracle of the Ordinary"
This week, President Trump quietly nullified an
order that required companies receiving large federal contracts to show
that they have complied with various federal laws, many of which relate
to discrimination in the workplace.
Below is what happened on Trump's 47th day in office. You can find out what damage was done every other day so far on the Saddest Calendar on the Internet.
Not even two weeks after the US Department of Health and Human Services eliminated questions about LGBT people
on two crucial national surveys on the elderly and the disabled, the
Trump administration extended their erasure of LGBT Americans yesterday
when they announced they would not include the option to declare sexual
orientation and gender identity on the 2020 US Census. Earlier in the
morning, LGBT advocates thought they had a triumph, as the Census Bureau
released a list of proposed subjects for 2020 that included questions
relating to the above, which were new additions that LGBT rights
advocates have been pushing for. But then the Census Bureau made a
follow-up announcement.
"The Subjects Planned for the 2020
Census and American Community Survey report released today inadvertently
listed sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic in
the appendix," the Census Bureau said in a statement. "This topic is not
being proposed to Congress for the 2020 Census or American Community
Survey."
The mistake was more than just a gaffe, as advocates have been
stressing the need for the Census to acknowledge the gender and
sexuality of those from whom its collecting data to ensure that LGBT
people are getting equal access to the rights and protections granted to
heterosexual and cisgender individuals. In a statement
from the National LGBTQ Task Force, Criminal and Economic Justice
Project Director Meghan Maury expressed her organization's
disappointment.
Continue reading on Broadly.
As a student of the dharma, I believe that what we call difference in the negative sense of the word is only a perceived lack of connection, and that difference offers the potential to create or manifest connection in a new and fulfilling way.
—Patricia Mushim Ikeda, "Not What I Thought"
Zen
practice, however, teaches you to completely be yourself—if you don’t,
who will? Someone’s got to hold down your corner of the universe, and no
one else is qualified.
—Shozan Jack Haubner, "Middle Way Manager"
