Via Daily Dharma: Be a Lamp Unto Yourself

A teacher, out of compassion and love, seeing that somebody is suffering, gives a path. But each individual has to walk on the path.

—Interview with S. N. Goenka by Helen Tworkov, “Superscience”

Via Daily Dharma: Are You Truly Alive?

To acknowledge that you are dying is to recognize that you are alive.

—Dean Rolston, “Memento Mori”

Via Daily Dharma: Happiness Is Right Here

When we believe that happiness should take a particular form, we fail to see the opportunities for joy that are right in front of us.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Cultivating Compassion”

Via Our Lady of Lust and Grace / FB:

Via Daily Dharma: No Matter What Happens

It doesn’t matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience.

—Tara Brach, “Making Room for Desire”

Via Daily Dharma: Transforming Hatred

Hatred brings more hatred, and violence only brings more violence. What we must do is stop this cycle here and now by transforming anger and hatred into compassion.

—Nawang Gehlek Rimpoche, “The Real Enemy”

Via Ram Dass/ Words of Wisdom - April 11, 2018

 

What I used to do is wait in line and I’d do mantra or breathing. I’d go into my Vipassana meditation. But now I’m interested in whether waiting in line at the bank can itself be the thing. I notice my impatience, notice the feeling in my feet as I am standing there, notice the different levels of reality of the people I’m looking at. Am I seeing a bank teller or am I seeing the Divine Mother as a bank teller? I allow myself to play with the moment more, still dealing with the stuff of the moment rather than going away.

-Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Pleasure Paradox

The odd thing about pleasure is that instead of fully enjoying what is here, being able to be fully present with it, we are busy looking for more. We miss the true depth of pleasure by being intoxicated with the possibility of more.

—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, “The Non-use of Intoxicants”

Via Daily Dharma: Shine the Light of Insight

Simply by turning on the light, you can instantly destroy the darkness. Likewise, even a rather simple analysis of ego-clinging and afflictive emotions can make them collapse.

—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “An Investigation of the Mind”

Via Daily Dharma: Why We Change

We ourselves and everything in our world arise and pass away because the conditions supporting our existence are constantly changing.

—Winton Higgins, “Treading the Path with Care”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - April 8, 2018

It’s interesting that the purer one’s heart becomes, the more the tiniest act is that which resonates in an appropriate fashion to bring a deeper harmony, a deeper way back into the Tao—as if one ever left it.  

 

-Ram Dass-

Via Daily Dharma: What Mindfulness Can Teach Us

Mindfulness practice isn’t meant to eliminate thinking but aims rather to help us know what we’re thinking when we’re thinking it, just as we want to know what we’re feeling when we’re feeling it.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Mindfulness and Difficult Emotions”

Via Daily Dharma: The Value of Trustworthy Friends

If you really want to become skillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds, you need a trustworthy friend to point out your blind spots.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Power of Judgment”

Via Daily Dharma: Nobody to Be, Nothing to Strive For

To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

—Eihei Dogen Zenji, “Tea and Rice”

Via Daily Dharma: Assessing Your Quality of Mind

Meditation requires some degree of being aware of awareness itself. We become cognizant of the quality of the mind, not just of phenomena perceived by the mind.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Good Shepherd”

Via Ram Dass - Words of Wisdom - April 4, 2018

To bring to our daily life a quality of awareness, an open-heartedness, a consciousness that understands the interrelationship of all things, means that we can begin to hear the way in which we can live on Earth in harmony with all things

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Cultivate Contentment

Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive.

—Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo by Lucy Powell, “No Excuses”

Via Ram Dass \ Words of Wisdom - April 1, 2018

When you learn to honor everybody you meet as your teacher, you'll see that there is nothing else you can do but be conscious, for the good of yourself and your fellow men and women. You begin to see that everything in your universe becomes your teacher - so your teacher is everywhere. You don’t have to rush to India because it’s always right where you are.

There are beings who can get as high as any enlightened being ever got, sitting in the middle of Topeka, Kansas or in the middle of New York, or in the middle of anywhere. It depends on your readiness, and that has to do with your karma or your readiness to get on with it.

Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma: Love Sees Clearly

Boundless love, in contrast to clinging and attachment, is the wish for everyone everywhere to have happiness and its causes. It banishes hatred. Love sees everything without distortion.

—Anne C. Klein, “The Four Immeasurables”