Via Daily Dharma: Finding Freedom

What is freedom? It is nothing more, and nothing less, than life lived awake.

—Ken McLeod, “Forget Happiness”

Via Daily Dharma: Anchor Yourself in the Present Moment

The practice of meditation isn’t confined... to what happens when we’re practicing sitting meditation. We want to learn to be present, to use the breath as an anchor to the present moment, to cultivate ease and wellbeing, in all postures, at all times.

—Peter Doobinin, “Tough Lovingkindness”

Via Daily Dharma: Weathering Life’s Storms

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.

—Jack Kornfield, “Take The One Seat”

Via Daily Dharma: Turn Towards Pain

In order to emerge from our pain, we have to enter it... when we thus relate to our pain, cultivating intimacy with it, we start liberating ourselves from our pain and from the painful consequences of avoiding our pain.

—Robert Augustus Masters, “A Painless Present”

Via Daily Dharma: Inspiration in Meditation

The key to maintaining your inspiration in the day-to-day work of meditation practice is to approach it as play—a happy opportunity to master practical skills, to raise questions, experiment, and explore. This is precisely how the Buddha himself taught meditation.

—Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Joy of Effort”

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

When you give another human being, your family, or your business, the fullness of your being at any moment, a little is enough. When you give them half of it, because you’re time binding with your mind, there is never enough. You begin to hear the secret that being fully in the present moment is the greatest gift you can give to each situation.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Use Compassion to Connect

Compassion allows us to use our own pain and the pain of others as a vehicle for connection... Because compassion is a state of mind that is itself open, abundant, and inclusive, it allows us to meet pain more directly... we know that we are not alone in our suffering and that no one need feel alone when in pain.

—Sharon Salzberg, “A Quiver of the Heart”

Via Daily Dharma: Bare Awareness

What we regard as the self appears to be a solid, personal identity that perceives things. But in truth there is no metabeing who unifies the parts. All our actions happen without an agent, or self, performing them. There is no seer, just the seeing; no hearer, just the hearing.

—Cynthia Thatcher, “Disconnect the Dots”

Via Daily Dharma: Exponential Love

If we can keep from grasping at others with the selfish fear of losing them... then the energy of love increases and its quality of giving energy to others opens and expands.

—Thinley Rinpoche, “Continuous Mind”

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

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute your heart opens, you are once again getting into the flow. And that flow is where you experience God. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Space We Need

Noticing the space around people and things provides a different way of looking at them, and developing this spacious view is a way of opening oneself. When one has a spacious mind, there is room for everything.

—Ajahn Sumedho, “Noticing Space”

Via Daily Dharma: Riding the Wave of the Universe

To live is to let go, and in order to live fully we must learn to let go fully and to embrace the flow that is the universe.

—Bodhipaksa, “What You’re Made Of”

Via Daily Dharma: Shared Happiness Is True Happiness

Happiness is not happiness unless it is shared. For happiness is the one thing in all the world that comes to us only at the moment we give it, and is likewise increased by being given away.

—Clark Strand, “The Wisdom Of Frogs”

Via Daily Dharma: The Journey to Meaning

If we wish to live well in the world, not just amble along through life without any examination of our being, then we must engage in the effort to find meaning in our lives.

—Eido Frances Carney, “The Way of Ryokan”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - September 26, 2018

When I look back on the suffering in my life, this may sound really strange, but I see it now as a gift. I would have never asked for it for a second. I hated it while it was happening and I protested as loudly as I could, but suffering happened anyway. Now, in retrospect I see the way in which it deepened my being immeasurably.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Watching Your Thoughts Disperse

Thoughts are like clouds and can vanish just as clouds naturally disperse into space.

—Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, “As the Clouds Vanish”

Via Daily Dharma: The Dharma Shapes Us

The Buddha’s teachings are something enduring that shapes us, if we slow down enough to take them in. We’re not a big deal ... but the dharma is.

—Mary Talbot, “Old Tibet Meets the American Midwest”

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

When I start to get angry, I see my predicament and how I’m getting caught in expectations and righteousness. Learning to give up anger has been a continuous process. When Maharaji told me to love everyone and tell the truth, he also said, “Give up anger, and I’ll help you with it.”
Maharaji offered me a bargain: “You must polish the mirror free of anger to see God. If you give up a little anger each day, I will help you.” This seemed to be a deal that was more than fair. I readily accepted. And he’s been true to his end of the bargain. I found that his love helped to free me from my righteousness. Ultimately I would rather be free and in love than be right.

-  Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Compassion For All

In difficult situations, [compassion] gives us the power to find a path that meets the vital interests of all concerned when possible and to minimize the pain when that is not possible. Compassion cuts through beliefs and goes straight to the heart.

—Ken McLeod, “Why Compassion?”