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If we let ourselves feel more and more, paradoxically, we get less controlling and less reactive. As long as we think we shouldn’t feel something, as long as we are afraid of feeling vulnerable, our defenses will kick in to try to get life under control, to manipulate ourselves or other people. But instead of either controlling or sequestering our feelings, we can learn to both contain and feel them fully. That containment allows us to feel vulnerable or hurt without immediately erupting into anger; it allows us to feel neediness without clinging to the other person. We acknowledge our dependency.
One way to read the injunction for Right Conduct, an essential part of the Eightfold Path, is to see it as calling us—as citizens—to translate the dharma into specific acts of social responsibility. In a democratic republic, that surely means voting for those initiatives that we believe will reduce suffering and violence, ignorance and hatred—and the very divisions fueled by politics itself.
Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay
Life is a mystery; the more you know it, the more beautiful it is. A moment comes when suddenly you start living it, you start flowing with it. An orgasmic relationship evolves between you and life, but you cannot figure out what it is. That's the beauty of it, that's its infinite depth.
Equanimity, one of the most sublime emotions of Buddhist practice, is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love. While some may think of equanimity as dry neutrality or cool aloofness, mature equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being.
It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
Author: Paulo Coelho
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive--it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.
Author: Toni Packer
There is no energy more powerful than love. Love creates miracles, heals all wounds, and purifies all lower energies. You cannot give love away, for the more you give, the more you will receive in return. When you choose love you bring about the Highest good for yourself and others. With love you can transform or be transparent to people's emotions and thoughts, neutralize "negative" energy, and harmonize with all life in the universe. Offering love is always the right choice.
“If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings.”
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Author: John F. Kennedy
Who burns with the bliss and suffers the sorrow of every creature within his own heart, making his own each bliss and each sorrow; him I hold highest of all the yogis.
Author: Bhagavad Gita
Find and follow the good path and be ruled by compassion. For if the various ways are examined, compassion will prove the means to liberation.
An exasperating lack of concentration, devotion, or inspiration might be just what you need to make the extra effort to tune in to your practice fully. Alternatively, of course, it may topple you in the other direction and stop you practicing altogether—a temptation you must resist at all costs. Always remember, though, that frustration with your spiritual path is often an indication that you are becoming a genuine dharma practitioner.
As an experiment, the next time you are doing an errand, stuck in traffic, or standing in line at the supermarket, instead of being preoccupied with where you’re going or what needs to be done, take a moment to simply send loving wishes to all those around you. Often, there is an immediate and very remarkable shift as we feel more connected and more present.
When mindfulness is equated with bare attention, it can easily lead to the misconception that the cultivation of mindfulness has nothing to do with ethics or with the cultivation of wholesome states of mind and the attenuation of unwholesome states. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’ve found that pointing people to their fundamental goodness will awaken it. It’s more skillful than pointing to the negative. We are so loyal to our suffering and to seeing ourselves as damaged that it’s very easy to use spiritual practice to reinforce our self-judgment. That doesn’t help people become liberated.
You do not learn non-attachment by disengaging and avoiding the intensity of relationships, their joy and their pain. It is easy to disguise as non-attachment what is not non-attachment at all, but your fear of attachment. When you really care about someone and you are willing to commit to that friendship, then you have fertile ground to learn about both attachment and non-attachment.
All buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all buddhas. One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality there is nothing to be born, Consequently there is nothing to perish.
Mind is like the wood or stone from which a person carves an image. If he carves a dragon or a tiger, and seeing it fears it, he is like a stupid person creating a picture of hell and then afraid to face it. If he does not fear it, then his unnecessary thoughts will vanish. Part of the mind produces sight, sound, taste, odor and sensibility, and from them raises greed, anger and ignorance with al] their accompanying likes and dislikes.
To find a buddha, all you have to do is see your nature. your nature is the buddha. and the buddha is the person who's free, free of plans, free of cares. if you don't see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you'll never find a buddha. the truth is, there's nothing to find. but to reach such an understanding you need a teacher. and you need to struggle to make yourself understand.
Gratitude is a way of undercutting your ego—that is, it is a way of being Buddhist. It really goes back to interdependence and those basic Buddhist concepts. There is an awareness that we get now and then about what we owe to others, and Shinran feels that that should become the moving force of one’s life. Then the egoism kind of takes care of itself.
We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop.
- Judy Lief, "Train Your Mind: Be Grateful to Everyone"
Whatever problems come to us from beings or inanimate objects, if our mind gets used to perceiving only the suffering or the negative aspects of them, then even from a small negative incident great mental pain will ensue. For it is the nature of indulgence in any concept, whether suffering or happiness, that the experience [will be intensified by that indulgence. As] negative experience gradually becomes stronger, a time will come when most of what appears before us will become the cause of bringing us unhappiness, and happiness will never have a chance to arise. If we do not realize that the fault lies with our own mind's way of gaining experience, and if we blame all our problems on the external conditions alone, then the ceaseless flame of habitual negative deeds such as hatred and suffering will increase in us. That is called: "All appearances arising in the form of enemies."
-- Dodrupchen
(Quoted from The Healing Power of Mind, by Tulku Thondrup)
"You breathe in the pain of a specific person or animal that you wish to help. You breathe out to that person spaciousness or kindness or a good meal or a cup of coffee - whatever you feel would lighten their load. You can do this for anyone: the homeless mother that you pass on the street, your suicidal uncle, or yourself and the pain you are feeling at that very moment. The main point is that the suffering should be real, totally untheoretical. It should be heartfelt, tangible, honest, and vivid."
Spiritual experience and goods can certainly reinforce a consuming mind, too, and it is no surprise to see this happening in a consumer culture. Marketers are successfully targeting spiritual consumers as a market niche and figuring out exactly what fulfills their self-centered yearnings. How many of these products are necessary for spiritual enlightenment? Probably not one.
"I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana."
Too often Buddhist 'nonattachment' is misconstrued as 'non-loving.' The purpose of Buddhist practice is not to 'renounce' our families or community, but to shed habits of self-protective clinging that prevent us from loving them more unconditionally, powerfully, enjoyably.
There is no denying that consideration of others is worthwhile. There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers, we ourselves suffer. Nor is there any denying that the more our hearts and minds are afflicted with ill-will, the more miserable we become. Thus we can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.
- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consider Yourself a Tourist"
Enlightened society is not an idealized environment. It's an environment that actually accepts the imperfections of humanity and encourages you to open your heart and mind and work with other people and situations as they are. Enlightened society is one in which, as you make friends with yourself, your communication with other people gets clearer, more direct, more honest.
The Buddha presented a radical challenge to the way we see the world, both the world that was seen two millennia ago and the world that is seen today. What he taught is not different, it is not an alternative, it is the opposite. That the path that we think will lead us to happiness leads instead to sorrow. That what we believe is true is instead false. That what we imagine to be real is unreal. A certain value lies in remembering that challenge from time to time.
Sometimes suffering comes through clinging to certain emotional pain or certain stories; sometimes through not recognizing emptiness, the evanescence of life, that nothing can be claimed as I or mine. The point of dharma practice is to pay attention to where there is suffering, see the clinging and identification, and release it to find a freedom of heart.
The virtues of great compassion are infinite; they could be expounded upon forever without exhausting them, but it boils down to this: Whoever has great compassion can extinguish all obstructions caused by past actions and can fulfill all virtues; no principle cannot be understood, no path cannot be practiced, no knowledge not attained, no virtue not developed.
"The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else."
Grace is the key to happiness. When bad things happen, if we have confidence in grace, then we can remain grounded in that and not be overwhelmed by the soap opera of life. And grace is a circular blessing. The more grace enters your life, the more grateful you are. The more grateful you are, the more easily grace seems to enter.
Spiritual realization is relatively easy compared with the much greater difficulty of actualizing it, integrating it fully into the fabric of one’s daily life. Realization is the movement from personality to being, the direct recognition of one’s ultimate nature, leading toward liberation from the conditioned self, while actualization refers to how we integrate that realization in all the situations of our life.
“We're buying into our limitations. Our ego again based on protection is going to have us believe a limited version of ourselves. But why we come here is to know an expanded version of ourselves. So we really need to determine how far am I willing to go to see the most celebrated aspect of myself, of my essence out into the world? And so the myth that we buy into is really the limitations and the judgments that we put on ourselves that really aren't true and this happens all along the way whether it's evolving and expanding our relationship with money, career, relationships etc. It's like we grow, we get a little bit of a rest period, we get asked to grow more. Your essence really wants to experience this expanded version of you.”
Mindfulness can transform all our personal relationships—but only if we are willing to feel the inevitable pain that relationships entail. When we turn away from our distress, we inevitably abandon our loved ones as well as ourselves. But when we mindfully and compassionately incline toward whatever is arising within us, we can be truly present and alive for ourselves and others.
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.
Buddhism praises the value of generosity but warns that you shouldn’t give something away if you’re likely to be upset later and regret giving it away. Similarly, although it’s good to help others, we shouldn’t agree to do something for another person if it will likely lead us to feel exhausted, resentful, and angry at the other person. Each of us has to judge our own capacities and set our boundaries accordingly.
With proper motivation, prayer becomes an important component of our practice because it helps to remove obstacles—counterproductive circumstances, imbalances of the subtle energies in the body, confusion and ignorance in the mind. Even in listening to the teachings, we may mentally edit what we hear, adding more to them than is being said or ignoring certain aspects. Prayer offsets these hindrances.
Perhaps the most important reason for getting to know our anger is that anger is actually a precious energy that becomes anger only when it is caught up in complex egoic patterns. Those patterns include my stories about anger’s cause and object as well as many deluded beliefs, not the least of which is the delusion of separation. This energy needs to be freed and transformed rather than distorted or destroyed.
The practice of generosity is the practice of freedom, and it carries with it all the joy and pleasure that are associated with liberation. Indeed, there may be no greater sense of fulfillment in life than the simultaneous feelings of human interconnection and pure freedom that arise from an authentic act of selfless generosity.
If any preoccupation comes in to bother the mind, just say in your heart, ‘Leave me alone. Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’ If any critical thoughts come up—fear for your life, fear that you’ll die, thinking of this person, thinking of that person—just say in your heart, ‘Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.’
Living in harmony with all beings is flexibility. It is a kind of cosmic democracy. Each of us has a role in the situation and gets one vote. You cast your vote by being here like a great unmoving mountain. Please cast your vote completely: that is your job. Then listen to all other beings, especially foreigners, especially strangers, and especially enemies.
An act of generosity entails giving more than is required, customary, or expected relative to one’s resources and circumstances. Certainly it involves relinquishment of stinginess, clinging, and greed. In addition, generosity entails relinquishing some aspects of one’s self-interest, and thus is a giving of one’s self.
If you really want to become skillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds, you need a trustworthy friend to point out your blind spots. And because those spots are blindest around your unskillful habits, the primary duty of a trustworthy friend is to point out your faults—for only when you see your faults can you correct them; only when you correct them are you benefiting from your friend’s compassion in pointing them out.
Simply doing good deeds, or even being a devoted meditator, doesn’t mean anything without the painful honesty that’s required to look at what we’re doing. We must take our heads out of the ground and look at all of the ways we get in our own way—fooling ourselves and obstructing the possibility of living a more open and genuine life.
Because generosity is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing, it reverses the forces that create suffering. It is a profound antidote to the strong habits of clinging, grasping, guarding, and attachment that lead to so much pain and suffering. Generosity brings happiness at every stage of its expression: we experience joy in forming the intention to give, we experience joy in the action of giving, and we experience joy in remembering that we have given.
- Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: The Joy of Generosity”
Many people are extending love, the simple wish for us to be happy—and have been since the day we were born. What is remarkable to me is what happens when we are willing to notice it. And even more remarkable is what happens when we are willing to receive it.
When we give, we need to do so with the awareness that our gift will be both appropriate and helpful. It is not an act of generosity, for example, to give money to a wealthy person or alcohol to a child. We also give what we can afford; we don’t jeopardize our own health or well-being. At the same time, we can give what is precious to us, what is difficult to give, because of our attachment to it.
Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have.
- Sallie Jiko Tisdale, "As If There is Nothing to Lose"
If we really stop to think about praise and criticism, we will see they do not have the least importance. Whether we receive praise or criticism is of no account. The only important thing is that we have a pure motivation, and let the law of cause and effect be our witness.
There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.
The more clearly we see the lack of worth in mental and physical sensations, the less desire we'll have for them until, thoroughly disenchanted, craving will be snuffed out automatically. As soon as that occurs, pure happiness will arise by itself.
It is undeniable that others and the larger world, so beleaguered at this moment in history, need everything that we have to give. But what to give is the problem. It seems finally clear that we cannot find out what to do simply by thinking about it. We need to gain our inspiration and our direction from much deeper sources.
Comments
~ Barry Magin, "No Gain"
~ Charles Johnson, "Accepting the Invitation"
on intellectual understanding,
pursuing words and
following after speech,
and learn the backward step
that turns your light inwardly
to illuminate your self.
Body and mind of themselves
will drop away,
and your original face
will be manifest.
If you want to attain suchness,
you should practice suchness without delay
~ Dogen
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
http://funnylifequotes4u.com/
~ Gil Fronsdal, "A Perfect Balance"
Author: Paulo Coelho
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive--it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.
Author: Toni Packer
There is no energy more powerful than love. Love creates miracles, heals all wounds, and purifies all lower energies. You cannot give love away, for the more you give, the more you will receive in return. When you choose love you bring about the Highest good for yourself and others. With love you can transform or be transparent to people's emotions and thoughts, neutralize "negative" energy, and harmonize with all life in the universe. Offering love is always the right choice.
Author: Unknown
http://www.wisdomcommons.org/virtues/84-love
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Author: John F. Kennedy
Who burns with the bliss and suffers the sorrow of every creature within his own heart, making his own each bliss and each sorrow; him I hold highest of all the yogis.
Author: Bhagavad Gita
Find and follow the good path and be ruled by compassion. For if the various ways are examined, compassion will prove the means to liberation.
Author: Tirukkural
- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, "Tortoise Steps"
- Joseph Goldstein, "Triumph of the Heart"
- B. Alan Wallace, "A Mindful Balance"
- Jack Kornfield, "The Wise Heart"
- Judy Lief, "Tying the Knot"
All buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all buddhas. One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality there is nothing to be born, Consequently there is nothing to perish.
Mind is like the wood or stone from which a person carves an image. If he carves a dragon or a tiger, and seeing it fears it, he is like a stupid person creating a picture of hell and then afraid to face it. If he does not fear it, then his unnecessary thoughts will vanish. Part of the mind produces sight, sound, taste, odor and sensibility, and from them raises greed, anger and ignorance with al] their accompanying likes and dislikes.
To find a buddha, all you have to do is see your nature. your nature is the buddha. and the buddha is the person who's free, free of plans, free of cares. if you don't see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you'll never find a buddha. the truth is, there's nothing to find. but to reach such an understanding you need a teacher. and you need to struggle to make yourself understand.
http://www.buddhasangha.com/quotes/bodhidharma-quotes/bodhidharma-quotes-sayings1.html
LOADS at that site!
- Rev. Dr. Alfred Bloom, "Beyond Religion"
- Judy Lief, "Train Your Mind: Be Grateful to Everyone"
-- Dodrupchen
(Quoted from The Healing Power of Mind, by Tulku Thondrup)
~ Pema Chodron
- Stephanie Kaza, "Ego in the Shopping Cart"
~ His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama
- Lama John Makransky, "Family Practice"
- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consider Yourself a Tourist"
- Pema Chödrön, "No Place to Hide"
- Donald S. Lopez, "The Scientific Buddha"
- Jack Kornfield, "The Sure Heart’s Release"
- Zen Master Torei, "Great Compassion"
~ Arnold Bennett
Found it from the random feature at this site -
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
- Dharmavidya David Brazier, "Let Grace In"
- John Welwood, "The Psychology of Awakening"
~ Michelle Bersell
- Christopher K. Germer, "Getting Along
- Jeffrey Hopkins, "Everyone as a Friend"
- Lorne Ladner, "Taking a Stand"
- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer”
- Nancy Baker, "Precious Energy"
- Dale S. Wright, “The Bodhisattva’s Gift”
- Ajahn Chah, “The Last
- Reb Anderson, “In It Together”
- Gil Fronsdal, “The Joy of Giving”
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “The Power of Judgment”
- Ezra Bayda, “The ‘Helper’ Syndrome”
- Beth Roth, “Family Dharma: The Joy of Generosity”
- John Makransky, “Love Is All Around”
- Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, “Generosity (and Greed) Introduction"
- Sallie Jiko Tisdale, "As If There is Nothing to Lose"
- H.H. the Dalai Lama, “Bad Reputation”
- Eihei Dogen, “Birth and Death”
- Cynthia Thatcher, "What's So Great About Now?"
- Reginald Ray, “Looking Inward, Seeing Outward”