Via Daily Dharma: Love Makes a Meaningful Life

Grace provides the framework within which a meaningful life is lived. Love is the substance of it day to day. To live a spiritual life, then, is essentially to do things “for the love of it.”

—Dharmavidya David Brazier, “Let Grace In”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom for December 3, 2017

We are training to be nobody special. And it is in that nobody-specialness that we can be anybody.  

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma / Do You Speak Kindly to Yourself?

Conventionally, right speech refers to how we speak to others, but I also believe it can help us pay attention to how we speak to ourselves. 

—Mark Epstein, “If the Buddha were Called to Jury Duty”

via Daily Dharma / How Goals Can Limit You

As long as we practice in a goal-oriented framework, the harder we practice the more we reinforce that framework.

—Ken McLeod, “Where the Thinking Stops”

Via Daily Dharma: A Benefit of Giving Up Certainty

Giving up one’s own certainties can open up a door toward a deeper intimacy with things, especially with people.

—Henry Shukman, “Far from Home”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 29, 2017

 

If we have finally decided we want God, we’ve got to give it all up. The process is one of keeping the ground as we go up, so we always have ground, so that we’re high and low at the same moment – that’s a tough game to learn, but it’s a very important one. The game isn’t to get high – the game is to get balanced and liberated.

 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Joy Arises from Simplicity

Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences.

—Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, “Simple Joy”

Via 7 of 12 Daily Dharma: Break through Walls with Dharma

The dharma breaks through every wall we erect because its ultimate goal is compassion, but compassion arises only when we embrace the foreigner as the self.

—Kurt Spellmeyer, “Globalism 3.0”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 26, 2017

The sooner one develops compassion in this journey, the better. Compassion lets us appreciate that each individual is doing what he or she must do, and that there is no reason to judge another person or oneself. You merely do what you can to further your own awakening.  

-  Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Spiritual Goal-Setting

If you aren’t careful, you’ll spend your whole life doing nothing besides waiting for your ordinary-person hopes to someday be fulfilled.

—Kodo Sawaki Roshi, “To You”

Via Daily Dharma: We Are All Believers

When we see that belief gives color to every stratum of our experience of reality, we can embrace others as kindred believers, regardless of the shades we tend to favor.

—Pamela Gayle White, “Real Belief”

Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Spend Your Time on Trivial Pursuits

It is easy to fritter away your time in frivolous pursuits that do not lead anywhere. But living in this way is like eating junk food: it is ultimately unsatisfying.

—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Don’t Be Frivolous”

Via Daily Dharma: Grounding Oneself in Wisdom and Compassion

In an ecosystem of dharma awareness a spiral of gratitude radiates out, grounded in the wisdom teachings and compassion of heart and mind.

—Wendy Johnson, “Spiral of Gratitude”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 22, 2017

If you’re involved with relationships with parents or children, instead of saying, "I can’t do spiritual practices because I have children," you say, "My children are my spiritual practice." If you’re traveling a lot, your traveling becomes your yoga.

You begin to use your life as your curriculum for coming to God. You use the things that are on your plate, that are presented to you. So that relationships, economics, psychodynamics—all of these become grist for the mill of awakening. They're all a part of your curriculum.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Make Gratitude a Practice

The Buddha encouraged us to think of the good things done for us by our parents, by our teachers, friends, whomever; and to do this intentionally, to cultivate it, rather than just letting it happen accidentally.

—Ajahn Sumedho, “The Gift of Gratitude”

Via Daily Dharma: Perfect Your Love, Not Yourself

The point isn’t to perfect your body or your personality. The point is really to perfect your compassion and your love.

—Jack Kornfield, “Finding Freedom Right Here, Right Now”

Via Daily Dharma: It’s All in the Moment

With your reaction to each experience, you create the karma that will color your future. It is up to you whether this new karma is positive or negative. You simply have to pay attention at the right moment.

—Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche, “The Power of the Third Moment”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - November 19, 2017

We can't push away the world. We have to enter into life fully in order to become free. 

-  Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Impermanence Must Be Felt

A sense of impermanence has to be felt and experienced. If we understand it truly, we will handle all our tribulations far better.

—Traleg Kyabgon, “Accepting the Unacceptable”