Via Daily Dharma: Be Consistent, Not Insistent

To keep your practice consistent, remember what the famous Nike ad says: “Just do it.” Don’t concern yourself with trying to get to some particular place or state of mind. Each day’s zazen will be a little different, just like the rest of life.

—Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, “An Introduction to Zen”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - March 28, 2018

Compassionate action is a path on which we grow in awareness and insight. As we grow, we become purer instruments for change. We become hollow reeds for the healing music of life. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: You Must Walk the Path Yourself

It is essential at the beginning of practice to acknowledge that the path is personal and intimate. It is no good to examine it from a distance as if it were someone else’s. You must walk it for yourself.

—Robert Aitken, “The Teacher in Everything”

Via Daily Dharma: Do Not Avoid, Do Not Desire

In birth there is nothing but birth and in death there is nothing but death. Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth, and when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid them or desire them.

—Eihei Dogen Zenji, “Birth and Death”

Via Daily Dharma: Dharma Works. Do You?

If you are willing to do whatever it takes to find your way out of suffering—and it means confronting the roots of resistance and craving right here, right now—you can reach complete success.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Getting Started”

Via Daily Dharma: What Sound Meditation Can Teach Us

Sounds, like everything else, arise and pass away. Just by listening, you can experience the insight of impermanence.

—Sylvia Boorstein, “Sound Meditation”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - March 25, 2018

You and I are in training to be conscious, to be conscious and compassionate in the truest, deepest sense—not romantically compassionate, but deeply compassionate. To be able to be an instrument of equanimity, an instrument of joy, an instrument of presence, an instrument of love, an instrument of availability, and at the same moment, absolutely quiet.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Creating New Habits

Sitting practices that focus on relaxing the underlying tensions and holdings you feel in your body, as well as restrictions to the breath, help you mitigate the legacy and habit patterns of reacting, clinging, and aversion.

—Will Johnson, “Full Body, Empty Mind”

Via Daily Dharma: Compassion Starts Close to Home

Thinking of yourself first, when your goal is to help others, might seem counterintuitive, but in fact it is the only way it can work.

—Cyndi Lee, “May I Be Happy”

Via Daily Dharma: Stick with It

This is why we practice meditation—so that we can treat ourselves more compassionately; improve our relationships with friends, family, and community; live lives of greater connection; and, even in the face of challenges, stay in touch with what we really care about so we can act in ways that are consistent with our values.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Sticking with It”

Via Daily Dharma: Know Your Mind, Live Your Life

If you want to be happy, you have to check the way you lead your life. Your mind is your religion.

—Lama Thupten Yeshe, “Your Mind Is Your Religion”

Via Ram Dass

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. What we go from is being born into our humanity, sleepwalking for a long time, until we awaken and start to taste our divinity and then want to finally get free.

We see as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren’t free. If you want to be free, you can’t push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It’s all God.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: What’s at the Root of Happiness?

It takes some training to equate complete letting go with comfort. But in fact, “nothing to hold on to” is the root of happiness. There’s a sense of freedom when we accept that we’re not in control.

—Pema Chödrön, “The In-between State”

Via Daily Dharma: A Practitioner’s Basic Question

The basic problem is one of self-knowledge: do we really understand what motivates us?

—David Loy, “The Nonduality of Good and Evil”

Via Daily Dharma: We All Need External Support

Before meditating, we pay homage to what’s traditionally known as the three jewels [the Buddha, dharma, and sangha], which buttress our practice . . . We aren’t meant to go at it alone.

—Elizabeth Zach, “Health Care for All Beings”

Via Daily Dharma: Allow Space for Serenity

Many of us try to do so many things at once that there is no space for serenity. We wonder why we are unhappy, why we feel alienated. We just need to remember to practice relaxing into our life, in all its joys and sorrows, and to relinquish the need to know what’s going to happen next.

—Michele McDonald, “Finding Patience”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - March 18, 2018

  If I am in my soul, when I look at others, I see their souls. I still see the individual differences – men and women, rich and poor, attractive and unattractive, and all that stuff. But when we recognize each other as souls, we are seeing each other as aspects of the One. Love is the emotion of merging, of becoming One. Love is a way of pushing through into the One.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: You Are Not Your Thoughts

Simply see the natural phenomena of physical and mental events as they arise and pass away. They’re not you. They’re not really yours. You don’t have any real control over them.

—Upasika Kee Nanayon, “Tough Teachings to Ease the Mind”

Via Daily Dharma: Breathing Is an Anchor to Awareness

The breath changes and you change. Nothing stays the same, yet there is constancy. The breath reminds us that we are here and alive: let it be your anchor to the present moment.

—Elana Rosenbaum, “Guided Meditation: Awareness of Breathing”