Via Words of Wisdom - December 23, 2018 🌟 Inbox x

The minute you project a future, you've just trapped yourself in your mind. You say, "Well, I'm gonna get enlightened next December," then that changes everything you do until then, and then in December you're going to have to give up that model anyway. It's like those guys who said the end of the world would come. When the end of the world didn't come, they were confronted with the fact that they had been caught in their own minds.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Taking the First Step

This wish for perfect enlightenment for the sake of others is what we call bodhicitta, and it is the starting point on the path. By becoming aware of what enlightenment is, one understands not only that there is a goal to accomplish but also that it is possible to do so.

—H.H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “The Bodhisattva Vow: Eight Views”

Via Daily Dharma: Renewal

From the macro to the micro, life seems to suggest that renewal is not only possible but also the great way of all things.

—Taylor Plimpton, “Starting Over, Again”

Via Daily Dharma: Keeping Our Balance

Equanimity acts like the ballast of a ship. Although the ship is blown one way or the other by the winds of life, it neither sinks nor goes too far off-course.

—Christopher Willard, “How Parents and Children Can Learn Balance and Equanimity from the Eight Worldly Winds”

Via Lion's Roar: Nichiren Shonin: A Teacher of Equality

I see all living beings equally.
I have no partiality for them.
There is not “this one” or “that one” to me.
I transcend love and hatred.

I am attached to nothing.
I am hindered by nothing.
I always expound the dharma
To all living beings equally.
I expound the dharma to many
In the same way as to one.

I always expound the dharma.
I do nothing else.
I am not tired of expounding the dharma
While I go or come or sit or stand.
I expound the dharma to all living beings
Just as the rain waters all the earth.

—Lotus Sutra, Murano version 

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Via Daily Dharma: Greet Fear with Curiosity

When fear arises, practice can be a very powerful aid to the whole spirit. Don’t be afraid of the fear. Be curious.

—Interview with Rick Fields, “In Light of Death”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 19, 2018 🌟

Everybody you know, you see, you remember, you will meet, is another face of God, is another doorway through. Is another way that God has come to you to awaken your attachments, to bring them to the forefront, to allow you to see through them.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Meaning in the Moment

Abandoning any hope of fruition does not mean abandoning our projects and ambitions. Instead it points to a way of going about things that is present focused rather than fixated on results.

—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Abandon Any Hope of Fruition”

Via Daily Dharma: Illuminating the Mind

When addressed skillfully, darker energies can be resolved and transmuted—to become powerful guardians of the dharma, supporting us as we find our way through the often turbulent waters of the psyche.

—Lawson Sachter and Sunya Kjolhede, “The Mind’s Dragons”

Via Daily Dharma: Find Joy in Being Here

Renunciation, though often understood to mean “giving up,” is, more accurately, the willingness to experience things as they are, not as we want them to be. Here you discover true freedom, the deep, quiet joy that has always been present in you.

—Ken McLeod, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 16, 2018 🌟

For a relationship to remain as Living Spirit, one of the best ingredients to put into the stew is truth. Gandhi spent his life in what he called experiments in truth. Learning how to just be straight.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Letting Go and Reaching Out

If we’re able to catch an angry thought as it’s budding, we can let it go. The same is true of despair or hopelessness. And when letting go is too difficult, a good medicine for dealing with these emotions is to reach out and help others, healing them and ourselves.

—John Daido Loori Roshi, “Between Two Mountains”

Via Daily Dharma: A Recipe for Compassion

It is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are dear. With that combination—seeing that people suffer and thinking of them as dear—you can develop compassion.

—Jeffrey Hopkins, “Everyone as a Friend”

Via Daily Dharma: Cultivating Insightful Curiosity

We need to be able to utilize the positive energy of wondering, of wanting to know the truth for ourselves and working to do that, and not get lost in cynicism or endless speculation.

—Sharon Salzberg, “Sitting on the Fence”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 12, 2018 🌟

The Living Spirit, the Beloved, is always right here. It is merely your mind that prevents you from acknowledging its existence. The minute you either quiet your mind or take your heart and open it out so that it draws your mind along with it, only then do you rend the veil and do you see that the Beloved is right there.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Right Time for Meditation

You should not limit your meditation to only in the morning or only in the evening: you should do it any time, all the time. Practice time is always now—it’s never in the future.

—Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, “Do Nothing”

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing Things Clearly

What’s the world? [It’s] any preoccupation that gets you stirred up, that disturbs you right now… If it arises in the mind, make yourself understand: The world is nothing but a preoccupation. Preoccupations obscure the mind so that it can’t see itself.

—Ajahn Chah, “The Last Gift”

Via Tmblr: Map of Homosexual Rights Worldwide

Via Daily Dharma: Effortless Ease

Perhaps the greatest irony of healing is that it occurs when we accept our felt experience, rather than rely on willpower or focused effort to get rid of the unwanted.

—Josh Korda, “A Safe Container for Fear”