Via Daily Dharma: Whose Presence Do You Value?

Many of us have a mind that measures self-worth in terms of productivity...  We give ourselves no credit for just being present. And yet, if you asked the people you care about what they would like most from you, their answer is likely to be some version of “your presence.”

—Jan Chozen Bays, “The Gift of Waiting”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 24, 2018

   

How stable are our lives? How stable is anybody’s life? What happens when stability is threatened is that people contract. If you’ve got an investment, and then it all starts to change, and you can’t quite stop it, so you contract, your heart closes, you go up into your mind, and when you get into your mind, you cause a lot of trouble.

The mind, in the service of fear, causes the quality of the thinking to become about things, so it sees everything as an object. All people become “them,” and “they” must be dealt with in order to protect yourself.

You and I are in training to find a place in ourselves, and in the way we live our lives, where we don’t freak out about changes to our dependent form of existence. A place where we don’t freak out in the presence of change or increasing chaos.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Moving Past Your Old Stories

We need not be limited by our stories. We are much more mysterious than they are.

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

Via Daily Dharma: The Ecology of Mind

Dhamma is the ecology of the mind. This is how nature has arranged things, and it has always been like this, in a most natural way. The mind with Dhamma is fresh, beautiful, quiet, and joyful.

—Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, “Conserving the Inner Ecology”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 21, 2018

Both Hindus and Buddhists say human birth is highly auspicious, because it has the elements for liberation. You have everything you need to work with in a human birth to become realized: consciousness or awareness, conceptual understanding, the emotional heart, joy and sorrow.

When Buddhists talk about the preciousness of a human birth, it’s the awareness associated with human birth that’s the opportunity. We become aware to bring ourselves to higher consciousness. Suffering is part of it too; it’s all grist for the mill of developing awareness. What’s here in front of you is what you can be aware of; it’s food for enlightenment. It’s your part in this passing show of life…

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Run the Way You Sit

We experience the gradual awakening to pure awareness that develops over the days, months, and years as we sit. When it comes to exercise, the principle is the same. We let the mind and body go on their own run, noting but not minding at all.

—Michael Hoffman, “Mind on the Run”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Find Harmony

Listening properly becomes a kind of harmonizing of parts of our being—our intellectual center, our emotional center, and our moving center.

—Philip Glass, “Listening to Philip Glass”

Via Daily Dharma: Sangha Is the Soil

If you don’t have anyone who understands you, who encourages you in the practice of the living dharma, your desire to practice may wither. Your sangha—family, friends, and copractitioners—is the soil, and you are the seed.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Fertile Soil of Sangha”

Via Daily Dharma: The Many Paths to Openness

Each of us has the possibility of finding a way to experience our lives free of struggle. And one of the common features of all these different ways is a sense of extraordinary openness.

—Ken McLeod, “The Way of Freedom”

Via Daily Dharma: Small Efforts, Big Changes

Positive transformation is usually incremental. Small efforts, if concrete, will pile up and bring about big personal, and even social, change.

—Shinso Ito, “Unconditional Service”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 17, 2018

As you get more conscious, every act you perform increases the amount of consciousness in the universe, because the act itself conveys the consciousness. In other words, I could tell you the greatest truths of the world but if I don’t understand them inside myself, forget it - because I’m not giving you the key that allows you to use it, which is the “faith” in it, which I can only convey through my own success in whatever I’m doing.

- Ram Dass -

Via Lionsroar / Death: The Greatest Teacher

The Buddha said the greatest of all teachings is impermanence. Its final expression is death. Buddhist teacher Judy Lief explains why our awareness of death is the secret of life. It’s the ultimate twist.

Make the jump here to read the full article and more

Via Daily Dharma: The Art of Wakefulness

To me, that’s what art and poetry are: trying to be awake in a room of people who are committed to being awake, and who are being attentive without necessarily acting.

—Marie Howe, “The Space Between”

Via Daily Dharma: Practice with Gentle Persistence

Refinement of attention is only achieved through a gentle and persistent letting go; it is never attained by the brute force of sheer willpower.

—Ajahn Brahm, “Stepping Towards Enlightenment”

Via Tricycle / Having Real Conversations (Even with My Sister)

When a gay Buddhist woman is asked by her sister why same-sex marriage is such an important issue, she is shocked into silence. Years later, she realizes that the only way we might communicate what we most care about is to have tolerance for another’s ignorance or confusion.

Make the jump here to read the full article on Tricycle

Via Ram Dass / 9 of 20 Words of Wisdom - January 14, 2018

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success— none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

Imagine that being in this love is like relaxing endlessly into a warm bath that surrounds and supports your every movement, so that every thought and feeling is permeated by it. You feel as though you are dissolving into love. This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything.

When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, “I am.”

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Interdependence and Civil Rights

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to deliver the same message as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching of interbeing. He wanted us to understand interrelatedness.

—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr”

Via Daily Dharma: A Marriage of Doing and Being

Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being.

—Lama Surya Das, “The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation”

Via 1 of 3,073 Daily Dharma: Desire Isn’t Always Bad

Passions and desires, like words and concepts, are not negative in and of themselves. It is only when we become obsessed by our ideas about what we think we are or should be that we become blind to the reality before us.

—Mark Unno, “The Original Buddhist Rebel”