Via Daily Dharma: One Step at a Time

With dedication, we can slowly build healthy mental tendencies, for awareness and wisdom, for kindness and compassion. That’s why we practice.

—Wendy Hasenkamp, “Brain Karma”

Via Daily Dharma: There’s Always Room for More

Because mind is infinite, it can embrace the universe and still have room left over.

—Daehaeng Kun Sunim, “Thinking Big”

Via Daily Dharma: Retrain the Way You Desire

People aren’t simply passive recipients of their experience. Starting from their desires, they play an active role in shaping it. The strategy implied by the four noble truths is that desire should be retrained so that, instead of causing suffering, it helps act toward suffering’s end.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Far Shore”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 3, 2018

A lot of people look back with horror on all their past experiences and say, “Well, finally it’s getting good.” That’s because they haven’t yet stood back far enough to see how exquisitely it all unfolds, how every confusing backtracking doubt, fear, horrible experience, unfortunate event, pitiful circumstance, seemingly frivolous act, sinful breakdown of discipline; all of it were just steps along the path.

But in order to see the path you have to be very quiet and stop thinking, because every time you think about how the path is, you just created something according to that thought. Even the concept of the path. You’re at the moment now, you’re on a path. You’re not there, you’re not there; you’re on the path.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Practice Is in Every Moment

The Buddha taught us to bring patience, generosity, and kindness into everything that we do. Observing such virtues during your work period will strengthen good habits and character, whether you are on or off the cushion, in or out of retreat.

—Glenna Olmsted, “Your Life Is Your Practice”

Via Daily Dharma: Gratitude for Our Enemies

If we can transform an enemy into someone toward whom we feel respect and gratitude, then our practice will naturally progress, like water following a downhill course.

—H.H. the Dalai Lama, “Enduring the Fires”

Via Daily Dharma: Intention Shapes the Future

From a practice perspective, there is great power in intention and how it can shape the present moment and even the future—because if you approach this present moment with wisdom, kindness, and a sense of responsibility, you won’t have to worry about the future. It will take care of itself.

—Dawa Tarchin Phillips, “What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next”

Via Daily Dharma: Navigating Your Thoughts

We have to be careful not to think that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts. On the contrary, I would say that meditation helps us to creatively engage with our thoughts and not fixate on them.

—Martine Batchelor, “Meditation, Mental Habits, and Creative Imagination”

Via Daily Dharma: Buddha Meets Buddha

If on our journey we do not value one face over another—white or black or brown, wrinkled or smooth—we may come in time to see that the face of the whole world is our own face.

—Lin Jensen, “Meeting Heartmind”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 30, 2018

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving; it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Kindness Is Common Sense

Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense.

—The Dalai Lama, “Consider Yourself a Tourist”

One thing I miss

One thing I miss here in Brasil, besides a big organized LGBTq community, is the uncles we had in Sacramento, who guided us, helped us out - babysat Spencer, sometimes showed me how to fix a sink, or cook a roast.... family

Our lives—the people living right now—are built on the foundation of the lives given by previous generations. We are at the front line of the chain of lives going back to infinite time in the past.

—Interview with Shinso Ito by Rachel Hiles, “Fire + Water”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 27, 2018

The more I center myself and meditate, the more I hear how it all is. Even if I don't hear how it all is, the more I am how it all is. If there's an uneven place in me, all I have to do is work on myself. As I give up attachment to knowing how it all works, then the actions come into harmony with the Dao. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Embrace Your Emotional Experience

Only when emotions are truly attended to can they be endured and transformed into useful energies that express our needs and help guide us through life.

—Josh Korda, “A Safe Container for Fear”

Via Daily Dharma: Investigate the Present

Our mind wanders incessantly, but our body and senses are always in the present. To investigate our embodied experience is to investigate the living present.

—Anne C. Klein, “Revisiting Ritual”

Via Daily Dharma: Release the Need to Be Right

Sometimes kindness takes the form of stepping aside, letting go of our need to be right, and just being happy for someone.

—Sharon Salzberg, “A More Complete Attention”

Via Daily Dharma: Open to Your Experience

Every time we’re up against the wall, we’re also standing at a threshold. The invitation to open to our experience—whatever it is from moment to moment—is always there, no matter how many times we need to rediscover it.

—Aura Glaser, “Into the Demon’s Mouth”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - May 23, 2018

In religious study, while there is the opening for healthy skepticism, there is another way which is to open Pandora’s box and let it all in. Figure that whatever is supposed to be useful to you, you will hold, and whatever else will fall away.

You don’t have to keep it all away at arms length for fear you will lose your virginity or something. You don’t have to protect your purity against the holy books. You just open up and let it come in, no matter how weird it all seems.

- Ram Dass -