People who are very enamored with their intellect don’t trust the inner space. They don’t know how to tune to it. They just haven’t noticed its existence, because they were so busy thinking about everything. There’s very little you can say to somebody who’s going through that, because it isn’t real to them. It doesn’t exist.
You can remind them of moments they’ve been out of their mind, because once you have acknowledged the existence of that other plane of reality, in which you know that wisdom exists, then immediately all the moments when you had it in life that you treated as irrelevant or as error, or as, “I was out of my mind,” suddenly become real to you, and you start to trust that dimension more.
If
we're not reflecting on the impermanent nature of life, then there are a
lot of unimportant things that seem important. Our jobs seem important.
Money seems important. But if we're really reflecting on impermanence
then we can see that the important things are compassion and loving
others—giving to others and taking care of others.
—Allison Choying Zangmo, "Living and Dying with Confidence"
A human being is a storytelling machine. The self is a story.
—Paul Brooks, "The Space Between"
As
we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more
love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between
nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.
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"
