Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
These are my favorite quotes (and are actually on my facebook page!)
"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream"
Vincent Van Gogh
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
...
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
Pearl S. Buck
“The sun, with all those plants revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”
Galileo
I found this in an old Mass newsletter ( from the 1980's when I was a practicing Catholic ) whilst going through some papers.
Some signs and symptoms of the Advent Virus:
A tendency to think and then act rather than respond based on fears from past experiences.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy the moment.
A loss of interest in judging other people.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of the ability to worry. ( This is a very serious symptom ! )
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others
as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
Source unknown
Actually that post of Andy is already in this thread a while back - symptoms of inner peace by Saskia Davis - it was post number 61 actually.
But it's okay 2 be reminded of it again ...
Love the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh!
Here's a little story i found a while back -
Buddha seemed quite unruffled by the insults hurled at him by a visitor.
When his disciples later asked him what the secret of his serenity was, he said:
"Imagine what would happen if someone placed an offering before you and you did not pick it up. Or someone sent you a letter that you refused to open; you would be unaffected by its contents, would you not? Do this each time you are abused and you will not lose your serenity."
"The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment. For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the world - a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections."- Don Juan
Actually that post of Andy is already in this thread a while back - symptoms of inner peace by Saskia Davis - it was post number 61 actually.
But it's okay 2 be reminded of it again ...
"
Sorry for the repeat - thanks for letting me know the author Geoff - Allen ... interesting that it was taken on as the Advent Virus - lol.
Also from another Mass newsletter ( having a big clean out at the moment ! )
Mercy
Ever let mercy outweigh all else in you.
Let our compassion be our mirror,
where we may see in ourselves
that likeness, and that true image,
which belongs to the
divine nature and divine essence
St. Isaac of Syria 7th C.
Thanks robot & nanadhaja - I do like the advice of walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
From Working with Anger by Thubten Chodron:
"We often focus on a few circumstances in our life that aren't going well instead of all those that are. Although we all have problems, when we over-emphasize their importance, we easily begin thinking that we are incapable and worthless. Such self-hatred immobilizes us and prevents us from developing our good qualities and sharing them with others.
When we look at the broad picture, however, we can see many positive things in our life. We can rejoice that we are alive and appreciate whatever degree of good health we have. We also have food (often too much!), shelter, clothing, medicine, friends, relatives, and a myriad of good circumstances. Many of the people reading this book live in peaceful places, not in war-torn areas. Many have jobs they like, and family and friends they appreciate. We shouldn't take these for granted. Most importantly, from a spiritual viewpoint, we have access to an authentic path, qualified teachers to guide us, and kind companions who encourage us. We have genuine spiritual aspirations and the time to cultivate these. Thinking about these good conditions one by one, we will be filled with joy, and any sense of being incapable and hopeless will vanish."
For more - try plugging the following into your favourite search engine -
If we were to put our minds to one powerful wisdom method and work with it directly, there is a real possibility we would become enlightened.
Our minds, however, are riddled with confusion and doubt. I sometimes think that doubt is an even greater block to human evolution than is desire or attachment. Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge.
This form of mean-spirited doubt is the shabby emperor of samsara, served by a flock of “experts” who teach us not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and proving the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.
Agree Geoff-Allen .... I also find Pema Chödrön's books very readable and enjoyable.
My daughter had a project and as part of it gave a talk based this passage at school in her Year 8 religion class this week - she has become more interested in my practice over the past 6 months and after reading her book " Start where you are " thought the passage would help generate the discussion she wanted to have ...
" Drive all blames into one" is saying, instead of always blaming the other, own the feelings of blame, own the anger, own the loneliness, and make friends with it ".
While I was in Malaysia, I saw a T-shirt depicting a surfboard aloft huge waves. Sitting on the surfboard was a figure meditating cross-legged. The slogan read, "Riding the waves of life, be mindful, be happy." That's it. Awareness. Being present. Knowing thoughts as thoughts, emotions as emotions. It's just like riding a surfboard. You gradually develop the poise to cruise along on the roughest seas until, no longer immersed in the waves, you are riding on top of them. Of course you have to start with small waves until you get your balance. Then the higher the wave, the better! Likewise, when we begin to train in awareness, it is better if we have an atmosphere which is nonthreatening and peaceful. That's why people go on retreat. That's also a reason why people set aside regular sitting periods. But once we learn how to be balanced, we become like a surfer who finds that the bigger the wave, the greater the fun.
When we rush in with this mental chatter, we are no longer being mindful. We are just thinking about being mindful. Mindfulness is not thinking about, it is being present and actually knowing in the moment without any mental commentary. If commentary begins to happen, we simply ignore it and return to being present in the moment. Think about this. There are so many things happening in our lives that we never really experience. We experience only ideas, interpretations, and comparisons. We dwell on things that happened in the past or anticipate future events. But we almost never experience the moment itself. It is for this reason that we often find our lives boring and meaningless. What we need to realize is that this sense of meaninglessness does not come from our lives, but from the quality of awareness with which we live our lives.
Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism by Tenzin Palmo
Hi Geoff -Allen ... have found a review of Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism by Tenzin Palmo here, interesting reading the reflections -thanks!!!
More from Pema Chödrön from me ... I am reading " Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living " again this weekend -
All the teachings and all the practices are about just one thing; if the way that we protect ourselves is strong, then suffering is really strong too. If the ego or the cocoon gets lighter, then suffering is lighter as well. Ego is like a really fat person trying to get through a narrow door. If there's lots of ego, then we're always getting squeezed and poked and irritated by everything that comes along. When something comes along that doesn't squeeze and poke and irritate us, we grasp onto it for dear life and want it to last forever. Then we suffer more as a result of holding on to ourselves. One might think that we're talking about ego as enemy, ego as original sin. But this is a very different approach, a much softer approach. Rather than original SIN, there's original SOFT SPOT. The messy stuff that we see in ourselves and that we perceive in the world as violence and cruelty and fear is not the result of some basic badness but of the fact that we have such a tender, vulnerable, warm heart of Bodhicitta, which we instinctively protect.
"For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond [the] tendency to mental self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred can never sustain itself. Generosity coming from self-hatred becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self-hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we can allow others to also find theirs."
~ Sharon Salzberg
Haven't actually read her books but try plugging the followin into Google -
Sharon Salzberg loving kindness
Or possibly this -
true spiritual transformation flourish quote moment
Every spiritual tradition has stressed that this human life is unique and has a potential that ordinarily we don’t even begin to imagine. If we miss the opportunity this life offers us for transforming ourselves, they say, it may well be an extremely long time before we have another.
Imagine a blind turtle roaming the depths of an ocean the size of the universe. Up above floats a wooden ring, tossed to and fro on the waves. Every hundred years, the turtle comes, once, to the surface. To be born a human being is said by Buddhists to be more difficult than for that turtle to surface accidentally with its head poking through the wooden ring.
And even among those who have a human birth, it is said, those who have the great good fortune to make a connection with the teachings are rare, and those who really take them to heart and embody them in their actions even rarer—as rare, in fact, “as stars in broad daylight.”
"The myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it assures the 'falling in love'- experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters. Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately in an attempt to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth."
~ M. Scott Peck
For more on attachment versus real love, try pluggin the followin into Google -
"In Vietnam there's a school of Buddhism called the Four Gratitudes. Just by practicing gratitude, we can find happiness. We must be grateful to our ancestors, our parents, our teachers, our friends, the Earth, the sky, the trees, the grass, the animals, the soil, the stones. Looking at the sunlight or at the forest, we feel gratitude. Looking at our breakfast, we feel grattitude. When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness."
"When you’re a Buddha, you have fully developed the two wings of a bird. You’ve got wisdom that literally sees everything that exists. Buddha says everything is knowable and each of us has the potential to see, to cognize everything. The compassion wing is the full development of the enormous empathy for all living beings as if they were oneself.The third quality is this immense power to effortlessly do whatever needs to be done to benefit all living beings, whose minds you see perfectly and for whom you have infinite compassion."
~ Robina Courtin, Mandala Magazine December 2003
"True freedom comes when we follow our Buddha nature, the natural goodness of our heart."
~ Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little instruction book
One day the dark. They smell like this trick, in a flower. When tweetle beetle puddle, blue fish, two fish, who was able to be thinking, truly in the meaning is the dark. They smell like this bed. If you sing if you, sir, funny things are not like this bed all night. The person who was perfectly silent. Then, we miss the light of sour gooseberry jam! What a dusty old jar of life. That is fun to see it a shame! It is quite simple. Everyone seemed to sing with heads in depth, with bricks and that Goo-Goose is quite a dusty old jar of peppermint cucumber sausage-paste butter! Now look! Made of sour gooseberry jam! Oh dear! You never yet met a star, he smiled because someone in their plumbing, who was not say anything for quite a long time. He smiled.
This is a shannonised text. Plug the word Shannoniser into Google and go to the nightgarden site.
You can choose from a number of "editors" including Lewis Carrol and Dr Seuss.
Enjoy!
Note - the original text I chose was as follows -
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. he did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower.... To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled.
That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
Holy... Well I started thinking you were reciting Vogon poetry because none of it made the least bit of sense. What is this Shannoniser? How does it work?
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books a mysterious order it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.
Then after editing it via Dr Seuss -
The human mind is no good.. My feet stick out of grasping the child notes a huge library. We are everywhere. Then pile the moon, I do not like pickled limburger cheese! I do not know who or how. One and the child entering a puddle, sir. Red fish, we serve hot dogs, they call it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.. The walls are written. Take a definite plan in the arrangement of Thing Two! Made of the languages in which they are everywhere. The walls are everywhere.
Cheers
Vogon poetry? Nice comparison! That's from Hitch Hiker's Guide 2 the Galaxy.
As a species, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort. To be encouraged to stay with our vulnerability is news that we definitely can use. Sitting meditation is our support for learning how to do this. Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness-awareness practice, is the foundation of bodhichitta training. It is the home ground of the warrior bodhisattva.
Sitting meditation cultivates loving-kindness and compassion, the relative qualities of bodhichitta. It gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies. It is a method of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward ourselves and for parting the curtain of indifference that distances us from the suffering of others. It is our vehicle for learning to be a truly loving person.
Gradually, through meditation, we begin to notice that there are gaps in our internal dialogue. In the midst of continually talking to ourselves, we experience a pause, as if awakening from a dream. We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exists in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered.
This coming back to the immediacy of our experience is training in unconditional bodhichitta. By simply staying here, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being. It feels like stepping out of a fantasy and relaxing with the truth.
Yet there is no guarantee that sitting meditation will be of benefit. We can practice for years without it penetrating our hearts and minds. We can use meditation to reinforce our false beliefs: it will protect us from discomfort; it will fix us; it will fulfill our hopes and remove our fears. This happens because we don’t properly understand why we are practicing.
Why do we meditate? This is a question we’d be wise to ask. Why would we even bother to spend time alone with ourselves?
First of all, it is helpful to understand that meditation is not just about feeling good. To think that this is why we meditate is to set ourselves up for failure. We’ll assume we are doing it wrong almost every time we sit down: even the most settled meditator experiences psychological and physical pain. Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, a simple, direct relationship with our being.
Excerpted from The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, by Pema Chödrön, Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2001. Reprinted by permission.
Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form. How can people use ordinary water to wash an intangible body? It won't work... To clean such a body you have to behold it. Once impurities and filth arise from desire, they multiply until they cover you inside and out. But if you try to wash this body of yours, you'll have to scrub until it's nearly gone before it's clean.
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.
If, as in a dream, you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment. But this is something only you know. You can't explain it to others.
Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
~ Allan Watts
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
~ Aitken Roshi
When we rush in with this mental chatter, we are no longer being mindful. We are just thinking about being mindful. Mindfulness is not thinking about, it is being present and actually knowing in the moment without any mental commentary. If commentary begins to happen, we simply ignore it and return to being present in the moment. Think about this. There are so many things happening in our lives that we never really experience. We experience only ideas, interpretations, and comparisons. We dwell on things that happened in the past or anticipate future events. But we almost never experience the moment itself. It is for this reason that we often find our lives boring and meaningless. What we need to realize is that this sense of meaninglessness does not come from our lives, but from the quality of awareness with which we live our lives.
~ Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism
At certain times, a silent mind is very important, but 'silent' does not mean closed. The silent mind is an alert, awakened mind; a mind seeking the nature of reality.
Through meditation, you learn about the nature of your mind rather than the sense world of desire and attachment. Why is this important? We think that worldly things are very useful, but the enjoyment they bring is minimal and transient. Meditation, on the other hand, has so much more to offer – joy, understanding, higher communication and control. Control here does not mean that you are controlled by somebody else, but rather by your own understanding knowledge-wisdom, which is a totally peaceful and joyful experience. Thus, meditation is very useful.
Mindfulness is not just a word or a discourse by the Buddha, but a meaningful state of mind. It means we have to be here now, in this very moment, and we have to know what is happening internally and externally. It means being alert to our motives and learning to change unwholesome thoughts and emotions into wholesome ones. Mindfulness is a mental activity that in due course eliminates all suffering.
~ Ayya Khema
Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to be truly present. When you are truly present, you are more in control of situations, you have more love, patience, understanding, and compassion. That strengthens and improves your quality of being. It can be very healing to touch your true nature of no-self. Psychotherapy can learn a lot from this teaching.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable."
"Training" the mind does not in any way mean forcibly subjugating or brainwashing the mind. To train the mind is first to see directly and concretely how the mind functions, a knowledge that you derive from spiritual teachings and through personal experience in meditation practice. Then you use that understanding to tame the mind and work with it skillfully, to make it more and more pliable, so that you can become master of your mind and employ it to its fullest and most beneficial end.
"Wisdom means that you realise that your peace-of-mind depends on the kind of thoughts you entertain. Especially thoughts about other people. The thoughts that lead 2 peace-of-mind are compasion, forgiveness & gratitude."
Because in our culture we overvalue the intellect, we imagine that to become enlightened demands extraordinary intelligence. In fact, many kinds of cleverness are just further obscurations. There is a Tibetan saying: “If you are too clever, you could miss the point entirely.”
Patrul Rinpoche said: “The logical mind seems interesting, but it is the seed of delusion.” People can become obsessed with their own theories and miss the point of everything. In Tibet we say: “Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.”
"To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development."
~ Felix Adler
We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
~ W. H. Auden
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
~ H. Jackson Browne
Bad habits are like chains that are too light to feel until they are too heavy to carry.
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
~ Cherie Carter-Scott
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty... in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.
~ Deepak Chopra
People stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
~ both by Churchill
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
Just know what is happening in your mind - not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty. It's like a letter - you have to open it before you can know what's in it.
If you listen to the Dhamma teachings but don't practice you're like a ladle in a soup pot. The ladle is in the soup pot every day, but it doesn't know the taste of the soup. You must reflect and meditate.
Dhamma is in your mind, not in the forest. Don't believe others. Just listen to your mind. You don't have to go and look anywhere else. Wisdom is in yourself, just like a sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.
Know and watch your heart. It's pure but emotions come to colour it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch emotions and feelings that come, and investigate them before you react.
You say that you are too busy to meditate. Do you have time to breathe? Meditation is your breath. Why do you have time to breathe but not to meditate? Breathing is something vital to people’s lives. If you see that Dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and practising the Dhamma are equally important.
We don't meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate.
"When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing - a knowing that directly comes from the cultivation of mindfulness - we may only go in circles, for our efforts and expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all."
We may say, and even half-believe, that compassion is marvelous, but in practice our actions are deeply uncompassionate and bring us and others mostly frustration and distress, and not the happiness we are all seeking.
Isn’t it absurd that we all long for happiness, yet nearly all our actions and feelings lead us directly away from that happiness?
What do we imagine will make us happy? A canny, self-seeking, resourceful selfishness, the selfish protection of ego, which can as we all know, make us at moments extremely brutal. But in fact the complete reverse is true: Self-grasping and self-cherishing are seen, when you really look at them, to be the root of all harm to others, and also of all harm to ourselves.
"The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being."
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that.
It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
~ Sylvia Boorstein
Develop the mind of equilibrium.
You will always be getting praise and blame,
but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:
follow the calmness, the absence of pride.
~ Sutta Nipata
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
In the beginning of Buddhist practice, our ability to serve others is limited. The emphasis is on healing ourselves, transforming our minds and hearts. But as we continue, we become stronger and increasingly able to serve others.
The Buddhist notion of attachment is not what people in the West assume. We say that the love of a mother for her only child is free of attachment.
Cultivating closeness and warmth for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It is the ultimate source of success in life.
This quote from Robert Browning Hamilton is included in a great little book I am reading this weekend ...
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she:
But, oh!
The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.
The book is Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom - really enjoying it ...
this from the book
I read up on Buddhist stories and parables.
One concerns a farmer who wakes up to find that his horse has run off.
The neighbours come by and say, " Too bad. Such awful luck."
The farmer says, "Maybe. "
The next day, the horse returns with a few other horses.The neighbours congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune.
"Maybe, " the farmer says.
When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbours offer condolences.
" Maybe, " the farmer says.
and the next day, when the army officials come to draft the son - and don't take him because of his broken leg _ everyone is happy.
"maybe, " the farmer says.
I have heard stories like this before.They are beautiful in their simplicity and surrender to the universe. I wonder if I could be attached to something so detached. I don't know. Maybe .
Question: Wouldn't life be boring without attachment?
Answer: No. In fact it's attachment that makes us restless and prevents us from enjoying things. For example, suppose we're attached to chocolate cake. Even while we're eating it, we're not tasting it and enjoying it completely. We're usually either criticizing ourselves for eating something fattening, comparing the taste of this chocolate cake to other cakes we've eaten in the past, or planning how to get another piece. In any case, we're not really experiencing the chocolate cake in the present.
On the other hand, without attachment, we can think clearly about whether we want to eat the cake, and if we decide to, we can eat it peacefully, tasting and enjoying every bite without craving for more or being dissatisfied because it isn't as good as we expected. As we diminish our attachment, life becomes more interesting because we're able to open up to what's happening in each moment.
There is a Vietnamese proverb, "Tri tuc, tien tuc, dai tuc, ha thoi tuc." That means, settling for "good enough" is enough. If we wait until all our needs and wants are met, we may wait forever. "Tri tuc" means "good enough." "Good enough" means being content with the minimum amount necessary. Your shirt and pair of shoes can last another year. It's all right for three or four people to share a desk for studying, there's no need for each to have her own desk. Settling for "good enough" in terms of simple living will bring us contentment, satisfaction, and happiness immediately.
As long as we think our lives are not good enough [materially], we will not have happiness. As soon as we realize our lives are good enough, happiness immediately appears. That is the practice of contentment.
In Vietnam there's a school of Buddhism called the Four Gratitudes. Just by practicing gratitude, we can find happiness. We must be grateful to our ancestors, our parents, our teachers, our friends, the Earth, the sky, the trees, the grass, the animals, the soil, the stones. Looking at the sunlight or at the forest, we feel gratitude. Looking at our breakfast, we feel grattitude. When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Two Treasures: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening & True Happiness
Difficulties and obstacles, if properly understood and used, can turn out to be an unexpected source of strength. Gesar was the great warrior king of Tibet, whose escapades form the greatest epic of Tibetan literature. Gesar means “indomitable,” someone who can never be put down. From the moment Gesar was born, his evil uncle Trotung tried all kinds of means to kill him. But with each attempt Gesar only grew stronger and stronger.
For the Tibetans, Gesar is not only a martial warrior but also a spiritual one. To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless. Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.
A meditation technique used a great deal in Tibetan Buddhism is uniting the mind with the sound of a mantra. The definition of mantra is “that which protects the mind.” That which protects the mind from negativity, or which protects you from your own mind, is mantra.
When you are nervous, disoriented, or emotionally fragile, inspired chanting or reciting of a mantra can change the state of your mind completely, by transforming its energy and atmosphere. How is this possible? Mantra is the essence of sound, the embodiment of the truth in the form of sound. Each syllable is impregnated with spiritual power, condenses a deep spiritual truth, and vibrates with the blessing of the speech of the buddhas. It is also said that the mind rides on the subtle energy of the breath, the prana, which moves through and purifies the subtle channels of the body. So when you chant a mantra, you are charging your breath and energy with the energy of the mantra, and so working directly on your mind and your subtle body.
Comments
"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream"
Vincent Van Gogh
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
...
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
Pearl S. Buck
“The sun, with all those plants revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”
Galileo
Some signs and symptoms of the
Advent Virus:
A tendency to think and then act rather than respond based on fears from past experiences.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy the moment.
A loss of interest in judging other people.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of the ability to worry. ( This is a very serious symptom ! )
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others
as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
Source unknown
Actually that post of Andy is already in this thread a while back - symptoms of inner peace by Saskia Davis - it was post number 61 actually.
But it's okay 2 be reminded of it again ...
Love the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh!
Here's a little story i found a while back -
Buddha seemed quite unruffled by the insults hurled at him by a visitor.
When his disciples later asked him what the secret of his serenity was, he said:
"Imagine what would happen if someone placed an offering before you and you did not pick it up. Or someone sent you a letter that you refused to open; you would be unaffected by its contents, would you not? Do this each time you are abused and you will not lose your serenity."
Sorry for the repeat - thanks for letting me know the author Geoff - Allen ... interesting that it was taken on as the Advent Virus - lol.
Also from another Mass newsletter ( having a big clean out at the moment ! )
Mercy
Ever let mercy outweigh all else in you.
Let our compassion be our mirror,
where we may see in ourselves
that likeness, and that true image,
which belongs to the
divine nature and divine essence
St. Isaac of Syria 7th C.
From Working with Anger by Thubten Chodron:
"We often focus on a few circumstances in our life that aren't going well instead of all those that are. Although we all have problems, when we over-emphasize their importance, we easily begin thinking that we are incapable and worthless. Such self-hatred immobilizes us and prevents us from developing our good qualities and sharing them with others.
When we look at the broad picture, however, we can see many positive things in our life. We can rejoice that we are alive and appreciate whatever degree of good health we have. We also have food (often too much!), shelter, clothing, medicine, friends, relatives, and a myriad of good circumstances. Many of the people reading this book live in peaceful places, not in war-torn areas. Many have jobs they like, and family and friends they appreciate. We shouldn't take these for granted. Most importantly, from a spiritual viewpoint, we have access to an authentic path, qualified teachers to guide us, and kind companions who encourage us. We have genuine spiritual aspirations and the time to cultivate these. Thinking about these good conditions one by one, we will be filled with joy, and any sense of being incapable and hopeless will vanish."
For more - try plugging the following into your favourite search engine -
viewonbuddhism depression
Cheers
Thanks for your latest contribution.
Cheers
Our minds, however, are riddled with confusion and doubt. I sometimes think that doubt is an even greater block to human evolution than is desire or attachment. Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge.
This form of mean-spirited doubt is the shabby emperor of samsara, served by a flock of “experts” who teach us not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and proving the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Cheers
clinging to emptiness
is an illness of the same kind;
It is just like throwing oneself into a fire
to avoid being drowned
-Master Yung Chia
~ Pema Chodron
I highly recommend her books!
For more of Pema, try pluggin the following into Google -
goodreads pema chodron
Cheers
My daughter had a project and as part of it gave a talk based this passage at school in her Year 8 religion class this week - she has become more interested in my practice over the past 6 months and after reading her book " Start where you are " thought the passage would help generate the discussion she wanted to have ...
" Drive all blames into one" is saying, instead of always blaming the other, own the feelings of blame, own the anger, own the loneliness, and make friends with it ".
There is also this online site http://pemachodronfoundation.org/
Thanks 4 sharing!
Here's a bit more from the viewonbuddhism site -
While I was in Malaysia, I saw a T-shirt depicting a surfboard aloft huge waves. Sitting on the surfboard was a figure meditating cross-legged. The slogan read, "Riding the waves of life, be mindful, be happy." That's it. Awareness. Being present. Knowing thoughts as thoughts, emotions as emotions. It's just like riding a surfboard. You gradually develop the poise to cruise along on the roughest seas until, no longer immersed in the waves, you are riding on top of them. Of course you have to start with small waves until you get your balance. Then the higher the wave, the better! Likewise, when we begin to train in awareness, it is better if we have an atmosphere which is nonthreatening and peaceful. That's why people go on retreat. That's also a reason why people set aside regular sitting periods. But once we learn how to be balanced, we become like a surfer who finds that the bigger the wave, the greater the fun.
When we rush in with this mental chatter, we are no longer being mindful. We are just thinking about being mindful. Mindfulness is not thinking about, it is being present and actually knowing in the moment without any mental commentary. If commentary begins to happen, we simply ignore it and return to being present in the moment. Think about this. There are so many things happening in our lives that we never really experience. We experience only ideas, interpretations, and comparisons. We dwell on things that happened in the past or anticipate future events. But we almost never experience the moment itself. It is for this reason that we often find our lives boring and meaningless. What we need to realize is that this sense of meaninglessness does not come from our lives, but from the quality of awareness with which we live our lives.
Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism by Tenzin Palmo
That's another author I'd recommend!
Have a good one.
More from Pema Chödrön from me ... I am reading " Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living " again this weekend -
All the teachings and all the practices are about just one thing; if the way that we protect ourselves is strong, then suffering is really strong too. If the ego or the cocoon gets lighter, then suffering is lighter as well. Ego is like a really fat person trying to get through a narrow door. If there's lots of ego, then we're always getting squeezed and poked and irritated by everything that comes along. When something comes along that doesn't squeeze and poke and irritate us, we grasp onto it for dear life and want it to last forever. Then we suffer more as a result of holding on to ourselves. One might think that we're talking about ego as enemy, ego as original sin. But this is a very different approach, a much softer approach. Rather than original SIN, there's original SOFT SPOT. The messy stuff that we see in ourselves and that we perceive in the world as violence and cruelty and fear is not the result of some basic badness but of the fact that we have such a tender, vulnerable, warm heart of Bodhicitta, which we instinctively protect.
"For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond [the] tendency to mental self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred can never sustain itself. Generosity coming from self-hatred becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self-hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we can allow others to also find theirs."
~ Sharon Salzberg
Haven't actually read her books but try plugging the followin into Google -
Sharon Salzberg loving kindness
Or possibly this -
true spiritual transformation flourish quote moment
Cheers
Imagine a blind turtle roaming the depths of an ocean the size of the universe. Up above floats a wooden ring, tossed to and fro on the waves. Every hundred years, the turtle comes, once, to the surface. To be born a human being is said by Buddhists to be more difficult than for that turtle to surface accidentally with its head poking through the wooden ring.
And even among those who have a human birth, it is said, those who have the great good fortune to make a connection with the teachings are rare, and those who really take them to heart and embody them in their actions even rarer—as rare, in fact, “as stars in broad daylight.”
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Have a good one!
~ M. Scott Peck
For more on attachment versus real love, try pluggin the followin into Google -
viewonbuddhism attachment
Namaste
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
That's one more author I can highly recommend!
~ Robina Courtin, Mandala Magazine December 2003
"True freedom comes when we follow our Buddha nature, the natural goodness of our heart."
~ Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little instruction book
Have a good one!
This is a shannonised text. Plug the word Shannoniser into Google and go to the nightgarden site.
You can choose from a number of "editors" including Lewis Carrol and Dr Seuss.
Enjoy!
Note - the original text I chose was as follows -
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. he did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower.... To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled.
That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
It comes from Thich Nhat Hanh
The shannoniser is a site I found which 'edits' any text you plug into it.
Just plug the word shannoniser into Google and then go to the nightgarden site listed.
Cheers
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books a mysterious order it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.
Then after editing it via Dr Seuss -
The human mind is no good.. My feet stick out of grasping the child notes a huge library. We are everywhere. Then pile the moon, I do not like pickled limburger cheese! I do not know who or how. One and the child entering a puddle, sir. Red fish, we serve hot dogs, they call it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.. The walls are written. Take a definite plan in the arrangement of Thing Two! Made of the languages in which they are everywhere. The walls are everywhere.
Cheers
Vogon poetry? Nice comparison! That's from Hitch Hiker's Guide 2 the Galaxy.
Sitting meditation cultivates loving-kindness and compassion, the relative qualities of bodhichitta. It gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies. It is a method of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward ourselves and for parting the curtain of indifference that distances us from the suffering of others. It is our vehicle for learning to be a truly loving person.
Gradually, through meditation, we begin to notice that there are gaps in our internal dialogue. In the midst of continually talking to ourselves, we experience a pause, as if awakening from a dream. We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exists in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered.
This coming back to the immediacy of our experience is training in unconditional bodhichitta. By simply staying here, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being. It feels like stepping out of a fantasy and relaxing with the truth.
Yet there is no guarantee that sitting meditation will be of benefit. We can practice for years without it penetrating our hearts and minds. We can use meditation to reinforce our false beliefs: it will protect us from discomfort; it will fix us; it will fulfill our hopes and remove our fears. This happens because we don’t properly understand why we are practicing.
Why do we meditate? This is a question we’d be wise to ask. Why would we even bother to spend time alone with ourselves?
First of all, it is helpful to understand that meditation is not just about feeling good. To think that this is why we meditate is to set ourselves up for failure. We’ll assume we are doing it wrong almost every time we sit down: even the most settled meditator experiences psychological and physical pain. Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, a simple, direct relationship with our being.
Excerpted from The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, by Pema Chödrön, Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2001. Reprinted by permission.
Have a good one!
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.
If, as in a dream, you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment. But this is something only you know. You can't explain it to others.
~ Bodhidharma
Have a good one!
~ Allan Watts
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
~ Aitken Roshi
Cheers
~ Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism
Through meditation, you learn about the nature of your mind rather than the sense world of desire and attachment. Why is this important? We think that worldly things are very useful, but the enjoyment they bring is minimal and transient. Meditation, on the other hand, has so much more to offer – joy, understanding, higher communication and control. Control here does not mean that you are controlled by somebody else, but rather by your own understanding knowledge-wisdom, which is a totally peaceful and joyful experience. Thus, meditation is very useful.
~ Lama Thubten Yeshe
Have a good one!
~ Ayya Khema
Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to be truly present. When you are truly present, you are more in control of situations, you have more love, patience, understanding, and compassion. That strengthens and improves your quality of being. It can be very healing to touch your true nature of no-self. Psychotherapy can learn a lot from this teaching.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Enjoy!
For more, try pluggin the followin into google -
viewonbuddhism funny quotes
Have a good one!
Mahatma Gandhi
Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Source unknown to me
"Training" the mind does not in any way mean forcibly subjugating or brainwashing the mind. To train the mind is first to see directly and concretely how the mind functions, a knowledge that you derive from spiritual teachings and through personal experience in meditation practice. Then you use that understanding to tame the mind and work with it skillfully, to make it more and more pliable, so that you can become master of your mind and employ it to its fullest and most beneficial end.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Cheers
~ Anon
Enjoy!
~ Joseph Campbell
Have a good one!
Patrul Rinpoche said: “The logical mind seems interesting, but it is the seed of delusion.” People can become obsessed with their own theories and miss the point of everything. In Tibet we say: “Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.”
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Have a good one!
~ Felix Adler
We are here on earth to do good for others.
What the others are here for, I don't know.
~ W. H. Auden
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
~ H. Jackson Browne
Bad habits are like chains that are too light to feel until they are too heavy to carry.
~ Warren Buffet
Peace!
~ Cherie Carter-Scott
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty... in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.
~ Deepak Chopra
People stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
~ both by Churchill
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
Have a good one!
If you listen to the Dhamma teachings but don't practice you're like a ladle in a soup pot. The ladle is in the soup pot every day, but it doesn't know the taste of the soup. You must reflect and meditate.
Dhamma is in your mind, not in the forest. Don't believe others. Just listen to your mind. You don't have to go and look anywhere else. Wisdom is in yourself, just like a sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.
Know and watch your heart. It's pure but emotions come to colour it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch emotions and feelings that come, and investigate them before you react.
You say that you are too busy to meditate. Do you have time to breathe? Meditation is your breath. Why do you have time to breathe but not to meditate? Breathing is something vital to people’s lives. If you see that Dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and practising the Dhamma are equally important.
We don't meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate.
Have a good one!
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
Namaste
Isn’t it absurd that we all long for happiness, yet nearly all our actions and feelings lead us directly away from that happiness?
What do we imagine will make us happy? A canny, self-seeking, resourceful selfishness, the selfish protection of ego, which can as we all know, make us at moments extremely brutal. But in fact the complete reverse is true: Self-grasping and self-cherishing are seen, when you really look at them, to be the root of all harm to others, and also of all harm to ourselves.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
~ The Dalai Lama
It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
~ Sylvia Boorstein
Develop the mind of equilibrium.
You will always be getting praise and blame,
but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:
follow the calmness, the absence of pride.
~ Sutta Nipata
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
~ Pema Chodron
Have a good one!
The Buddhist notion of attachment is not what people in the West assume. We say that the love of a mother for her only child is free of attachment.
Cultivating closeness and warmth for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It is the ultimate source of success in life.
Have a good one!
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she:
But, oh!
The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.
The book is Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom - really enjoying it ...
this from the book
I read up on Buddhist stories and parables.
One concerns a farmer who wakes up to find that his horse has run off.
The neighbours come by and say, " Too bad. Such awful luck."
The farmer says, "Maybe. "
The next day, the horse returns with a few other horses.The neighbours congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune.
"Maybe, " the farmer says.
When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbours offer condolences.
" Maybe, " the farmer says.
and the next day, when the army officials come to draft the son - and don't take him because of his broken leg _ everyone is happy.
"maybe, " the farmer says.
I have heard stories like this before.They are beautiful in their simplicity and surrender to the universe. I wonder if I could be attached to something so detached. I don't know. Maybe .
Have read somethin similar in 'The Power of Now'.
Question: Wouldn't life be boring without attachment?
Answer: No. In fact it's attachment that makes us restless and prevents us from enjoying things. For example, suppose we're attached to chocolate cake. Even while we're eating it, we're not tasting it and enjoying it completely. We're usually either criticizing ourselves for eating something fattening, comparing the taste of this chocolate cake to other cakes we've eaten in the past, or planning how to get another piece. In any case, we're not really experiencing the chocolate cake in the present.
On the other hand, without attachment, we can think clearly about whether we want to eat the cake, and if we decide to, we can eat it peacefully, tasting and enjoying every bite without craving for more or being dissatisfied because it isn't as good as we expected. As we diminish our attachment, life becomes more interesting because we're able to open up to what's happening in each moment.
~ Thubten Chodron, Buddhism for Beginners
Have a good one!
As long as we think our lives are not good enough [materially], we will not have happiness. As soon as we realize our lives are good enough, happiness immediately appears. That is the practice of contentment.
In Vietnam there's a school of Buddhism called the Four Gratitudes. Just by practicing gratitude, we can find happiness. We must be grateful to our ancestors, our parents, our teachers, our friends, the Earth, the sky, the trees, the grass, the animals, the soil, the stones. Looking at the sunlight or at the forest, we feel gratitude. Looking at our breakfast, we feel grattitude. When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Two Treasures: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening & True Happiness
Have a good one!
For the Tibetans, Gesar is not only a martial warrior but also a spiritual one. To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless. Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Cheers
..
When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.
~ Charles Varlet Marquis de La Grange
It is a golden rule not to judge men by their opinions but rather by what their opinions make of them.
~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.
~ Suzanne Necker
If you don't bring Paris with you, you won't find it there.
~ John M. Shanahan
The wicked are always surprised to find that the good can be clever.
~ Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
~ Henry Louis Menchken
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
~ Eric Hoffer
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
~ Henry Louis Mencken
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passionhs a quotation.
~ Oscar Wilde
Everybody wants to be somebody: Nobody wants to grow.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right?
~ Robert Mallet
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
~ Sir Arthur Helps
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.
~ Aldous Leonard Huxley
Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
~ Princess Elizabeth Bibesco
A meditation technique used a great deal in Tibetan Buddhism is uniting the mind with the sound of a mantra. The definition of mantra is “that which protects the mind.” That which protects the mind from negativity, or which protects you from your own mind, is mantra.
When you are nervous, disoriented, or emotionally fragile, inspired chanting or reciting of a mantra can change the state of your mind completely, by transforming its energy and atmosphere. How is this possible? Mantra is the essence of sound, the embodiment of the truth in the form of sound. Each syllable is impregnated with spiritual power, condenses a deep spiritual truth, and vibrates with the blessing of the speech of the buddhas. It is also said that the mind rides on the subtle energy of the breath, the prana, which moves through and purifies the subtle channels of the body. So when you chant a mantra, you are charging your breath and energy with the energy of the mantra, and so working directly on your mind and your subtle body.
Cheers