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Ego is the problem. Sometimes ego is very spoiled, like a child who is constantly throwing tantrums. Sometimes ego doesn't accept where we are. Sometimes ego doesn't accept who we are. Sometimes ego doesn't accept the way things are without any real complaint. So what do we do? There is nothing that we can do. Sometimes ego doesn't accept the fact that the sky is blue but there is nothing that we can do. You see. Sometimes ego doesn't accept that we are living on a planet that is permeated with natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, and other catastrophes. All we can do is accept that and learn how to surrender to the flow of all events.
Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. — Benjamin Franklin
"When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. "But it, too, seemed immovable. "As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. "And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. "From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world."
From the tombstone of an Anglican bishop in Westminster Abbey
Do no harm to the earth, she is your mother. Being is more important than having. Never promote yourself at another's expense. Hold life sacred; treat it with reverence. Allow each person the digity of his or her labor. Open your home to the wayfarer. Be ready to receive your deepest dreams; sometimes they are the speech of unblighted conscience. Always make restitutions to the ones you have harmed. Never think less of yourself than you are. Never think that you are more than another.
When someone is suffering and you find yourself at a loss to know how to help, put yourself unflinchingly in his or her place. Imagine as vividly as possible what you would be going through if you were suffering the same pain. Ask yourself: “How would I feel? How would I want my friends to treat me? What would I most want from them?”
"If you seek liberation, you must have more than an intellectual understanding of suffering, its causes, and the antidotes; you must practice for this understanding to mature. Just as a deer shot by a hunter retreats into solitude to heal itself, so too, you should withdraw from all superfluous activity. At the very least, occasionally withdraw into solitude in order to practice. As a result, you may realize the one taste of reality and cut through the divisions created by delusion, attachment, and hatred. Once you have gained this realization, you become as fearless and powerful as a snow lion. You have then achieved the state of confidence. At this point, your own self-interest is fulfilled as you observe all phenomena as displays of awareness. Having brought your own inner transformation to perfection with the motivation of being of benefit to others, you are now fully capable of serving others' needs. This is the path of a true Dharma practitioner."
~ Karma Chagme from "A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga"
"According to Buddhist practice, to develop genuine compassion you must first practice the meditation of equalization and equanimity, detaching oneself from those people who are very close to you. Then, you must remove negative feelings towards your enemies. All sentient beings should be looked on as equal. On that basis, you can gradually develop genuine compassion for all of them."
The following I found at the world of quotes site -
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” ~ Marcel Pagnol
“Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different.” ~ Stacey Charter
“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” ~ Robert Muller
“Many search for happiness as we look for a hat we wear on our heads.” ~ Nikolaus Lenus
“We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.” ~ Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
“Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.” ~ Charles M Schwab
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” ~ Denis Waitley
And finally, here's one from an actual real-life Buddhist -
“It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on." ~ Sharon Salzberg
"Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex."
How about a couple from Awakening the Buddha within -
The next time you feel so angry you could scream, ask yourself: Who is making me angry? Perhaps the anger is subtly directed at yourself. When our expectations are not met, we tend to blame others and get angry. But is our discontent really their fault? Shantideva said that anger is the greatest evil because it is so destructive and can cause so much harm. The trained mind of the Bohdisattva, like a peaceful lake, is able to transcend anger. Even if people throw sparks into it, it doesn't explode because it's like water and not volatile. The untrained mind, on the other hand, can be likened to a big pool of gasoline. Every spark makes it explode. In life, there will always be sparks. But does there have to be an explosion? That's your responsibility. Nobody can make us angry if we have no seeds of anger left inside.
Each of us is fully endowed with luminous Buddha-nature, the potential for awakened enlightenment. Tibetans firmly believe that there have been and still are many enlightened beings who walk among us. In fact, there are yogis living anonymously everywhere without calling attention to themselves. Spiritual giants are universally accepted as heroes in Tibet where the names that are remebered aren't those of sports figures, politicians or movie-stars. Ask any Tibetan about Milarepa, the eleventh century, cave-dwelling yogi-sage. As Tibet's most beloved poet, Milarepa gained enlightenement in a single lifetime. Every child has heard his spontaneous songs of joyous wisdom.
"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."
"The value of compassion cannot be overemphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No greater burden can be born by an individual than to know no one cares or understands."
~ Arthur H. Stainback
"Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently."
~ Palladas
"Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself but most of them were written for him."
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me."
"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
~ Guillaume Apollinaire
"We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."
~ Marie Beynon
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
~ Pablo Casals
"Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now."
~ Pema Chodron
"We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything."
~ Gary Craig
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."
"Just as a writer learns the spontaneous freedom of expression only after years of often grueling study, and just as the simple grace of a dancer is achieved only with enormous, patient effort, so when you begin to understand where meditation will lead you, you will approach it as the greatest endeavor of your life, one that demands of you the deepest perseverance, enthusiasm, intelligence, and discipline."
"The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds."
~ Dan Millman
"Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?"
~ Rumi
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
~ Rumi
"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling."
~ Margaret Lee Runbeck
"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
~ Maya Angelou
"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed."
~ Bernard M. Baruch
"Life is a conspiracy to shower you with a nonstop feast of interesting experiences, all of which are designed to help you grow your intelligence, shed your pretensions, and master the art of ingenious love."
~ Rob Brezsny
"Live out of your imagination instead of your memory."
~ Les Brown
"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."
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." ~ James Baldwin
"End your day by privately looking directly into your eyes in the mirror and saying, 'I love you!' Do this for thirty days and watch how you transform." ~ Mark Victor Hansen
"I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, to be shunned by everybody, to be just nobody [to no one]" ~ Mother Teresa of Avila 'My Life for the Poor'
"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
"Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
"There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect." ~ Nikki Giovanni
"When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus
"When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love." ~ Robert Fulghum
"There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem... It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you could be the happiest and most powerful being in the world..." ~ Emmet Fox
And let's have at least ONE Buddhist quote!
"Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation." ~ Sharon Salzberg
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person."
"If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
~ Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." ~ Aristotle
"All the wonders you seek are within yourself." ~ Sir Thomas Brown
"The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song." ~ Ralph Brum
"The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position." ~ Leo Buscaglia
"Each one of us has all the wisdom and knowledge we ever need right within us. It is available to us through our intuitive mind, which is our connection with universal intelligence." ~ Shakti Gawain
And ... let's NOT forget the big guy -
"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings, and all beings in his own self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye." ~ Buddha
"Truths cannot be acquired from words out of other people’s mouths. Before Truths can be internalized, they must come from one’s own realizations and practices. Through a lifetime of personal practice, human beings are capable of revealing all of the secrets of the cosmic essence. You are your own best judge." ~ Buddha
"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."
~ Ajahn Chah
"Sometimes it is difficult to find time to meditate each day. But we always have time to watch TV. We always have time to go shopping. We always have time to get a snack from the refrigerator. Why is it that the twenty-four hours run out when it is time to meditate? When we understand the value and effect of spiritual practice, it will become a high priority in our life, and when something is important, we find time for it. It's good to set up a daily meditation practice of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes in the morning. To do that, we may have to sacrifice fifteen or thirty minutes of television the previous evening in order to go to bed a little earlier. But compared to the benefit of practicing the Dharma, missing a little TV is not a big thing. In the same way that we always find time to eat because food nourishes our body, we will find time to meditate and recite prayers because they nourish us spiritually. When we respect ourselves spiritually, we respect ourselves as human beings. Nourishing ourselves spiritually then becomes a very important priority, and having time for it is easy."
~ Ven. Thubten Chodron, Taming the Mind
"Please don't be a dumb meditator, a thought-wiper trying not to think, falling into the extreme of trying not to do anything in life. This is quietism, not the wisdom of the Middle Way. This is much too simple minded. It is important to learn how to meditate, not to just do it without guidance or direction. That would be like throwing stones in the dark and hoping to hit a target. Learning and practice have to go hand in hand, or you'll find it as difficult as trying to climb a mountain either without legs and hands (practice) or without head and eyes (learning, guidance); for we actually need both on the spiritual journey. I mainly hope to educate people who really want to be authentic Bodhisattvas and Vajrayana practitioners and Buddhist practitioners seeking wisdom and enlightenment."
~ HH the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa
"One of the first places we can begin to enter the heart of wisdom is by noticing how quickly the mind likes to judge. By softening the tendency of cold, egocentric analyzing we take an important step into the peaceful reality of knowing one another beyond our karmic and social habits."
~ Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa
"My teacher often likens meditation practice to a river flowing through our life. In the early stages, like a mountain spring, our practice is fleeting and undeveloped. There may be a fair few leaps and crashes before we settle into a more regular rhythm. Little by little our practice continues to grow and mature until eventually it becomes like a vast river, attracting everything else to it, no longer a small trickle in our life, but the most compelling force of it. The river may still encounter obstacles, but they are of little consequence. It will simply flow over or around them, having developed a smooth, calm, but unstoppable momentum."
~ David Michie; Hurry Up and Meditate: Your Starter Kit for Inner Peace and Better Health
"It's like a child who is learning to write. At first he doesn't write nicely -- big, long loops and squiggles -- he writes like a child. After a while the writing improves through practice. Practicing the Dhamma is like this. At first you are awkward...sometimes calm, sometimes not, you don't really know what's what. Some people get discouraged. Don't slacken off! You must persevere with the practice. Live with effort, just like the schoolboy: as he gets older he writes better and better. From writing badly he grows to write beautifully, all because of the practice from childhood."
~ Ajahn Chah
"Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion. Practice good-heartedness toward all beings. Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you. What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream. The trick is to have positive intention during the dream. This is the essential point. This is true spirituality."
~ Chakdud Tulku Rinpoche
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost."
~ Dalai Lama
"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.
Firstly, we should re-examine our own attitude towards others and constantly check ourselves to see whether we are practicing properly. Before pointing our finger at others we should point it towards ourselves. Secondly, we must be prepared to admit our faults and stand corrected."
~ Dalai Lama
"My Western friends often ask me for the quickest, easiest, most effective, and cheapest way of practising Dharma! I think to find such a way is impossible! Maybe that is a sign of failure!
We should realize that practising the Dharma is actually something that needs to be done twenty four hours a the day.That's why we make a distinction between actual meditation sessions and post meditation periods, the idea being that both while you are in the meditative session and also when you are out of it, you should be fully within the realm of Dharma practice. In fact, one could say that the post-meditation periods are the real test of the strength of your practice."
"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, Answers from the Heart
"In Asian languages, the word for ‘mind’ and the word for ‘heart’ are the same word. So when we hear the word ‘mindfulness’, we have to inwardly also hear ‘heartfulness’ in order to grasp it even as a concept, and especially as a way of being."
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Bare awareness is not easy to develop and maintain because of the mind's disposition to be constantly preoccupied by thoughts. We easily lose attention because our mind is so busy. When we do, our emotional life can creep up on us and take us over. Without mindfulness, the capacity to maintain attention, disidentification is very difficult, and bare awareness even more so. Through meditation it is possible to cultivate a quiet, unintrusive awareness that greatly strengthens our capacity to remain with our feelings. We simply allow their presence without judging them, or needing to make them different.
The early stage of meditation focuses attention and cultivates mindfulness. Mindfulness is our capacity to watch and remain conscious as emotions, feelings, and thoughts arise. We may begin in meditation by observing the breath and gradually quietening the mind from the constant discursive chatter that interrupts our attention. In time a quality of bare awareness is established free from the conceptual confusion that discriminates and evaluates what arises and parcels it up in conceptual boxes of good or bad. Furthermore, this quiet awareness does not become pulled into the contents of mental activity and drown in their confusion."
~ Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra
When I teach meditation, I often begin by saying: “Bring your mind home. And release. And relax.”
To bring your mind home means to bring the mind into the state of Calm Abiding through the practice of mindfulness. In its deepest sense, to bring your mind home is to turn your mind inward and rest in the nature of mind. This itself is the highest meditation.
To release means to release the mind from its prison of grasping, since you recognize that all pain and fear and distress arise from the craving of the grasping mind. On a deeper level, the realization and confidence that arise from your growing understanding of the nature of mind inspire the profound and natural generosity that enables you to release all grasping from your heart, letting it free itself to melt away in the inspiration of meditation. To relax means to be spacious and to relax the mind of its tensions. More deeply, you relax into the true nature of your mind, the state of Rigpa. It is like pouring a handful of sand onto a hot surface, and each grain settles of its own accord. This is how you relax into your true nature, letting all thoughts and emotions naturally subside and dissolve into the state of the nature of mind.
Men come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come—to them, their wives, their children, their friends—catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere.
To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
~ Montagnie
In Buddhist terms, death is a natural event. The Buddha encouraged us to observe, to contemplate. Funerals in northeast Thailand where I lived were very meaningful because we actually contemplated what happened. We could see the body, and it wasn't made up to look beautiful. They didn't put lipstick and powder on it. It was just a dead human body, and we meditated on that. We made conscious the reality: the death of the body is like this. This was not depressing or traumatic for me. When Ajahn Chah held these funerals, I didn't faint. I found it a very powerful experience.
I had never had such opportunities in the United States to really bring death and loss into consciousness and to really look at a dead human corpse. We live in a society that wants to deny and cover it up. It's not polite to even say the word death in public. We use euphemisms that make it less stark, less shocking. But awareness includes the whole process—from birth to death, from the peak moments of life to the worst, the climb up and the slide down. By reflecting and observing, we free ourselves from the fears, the reactions and the projections that we create around the flow of our lives, around our own bodies, around the loss of our loved ones.
When my own mother died, I was with the feeling of loss and grief. It can be witnessed. I wasn't afraid or trying to ignore my feelings. They interested me. To have this ability to really accept my feelings, I had to train myself, because my conditioning was the reverse. On a cultural level, I'd been conditioned to suppress feelings, to deny or ignore them. It has taken intentional, deliberate effort to look, observe and allow feelings of loss or grief into consciousness. This doesn't mean a grasping of feelings or wallowing in emotions. It's seeing things in terms of Dhamma. It is what it is. The death of one's mother is like this.
~ From: InquiringMind.com
Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions. If you have got to think about something — Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death.
~ Gyalse Rinpoche
From a Buddhist point of view, the actual experience of death is very important. Although how or where we will be reborn is generally dependent on karmic forces, our state of mind at the time of death can influence the quality of our next rebirth. So at the moment of death, in spite of the great variety of karmas we have accumulated, if we make a special effort to generate a virtuous state of mind, we may strengthen and activate a virtuous karma, and so bring about a happy rebirth.
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, "Be an Island"
Subhuti asked: 'You say, Honored One, that a follower of the way does not need to build up goodness and happiness. Why is that?'
The Buddha replied: 'Subhuti, a true follower will express goodness and happiness but will not be caught up in the concepts of goodness and happiness. That’s why I say that he does not need to build up goodness and happiness, which would only be concept traps, for goodness and happiness will be there without any idea of them.'
~ Diamond Sutra
May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and its causes. May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from bias, attachment and anger.
~ Buddhist Prayer
Let one's thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world without any obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity.
~ Samyutta Nikaya
If you seek after truth, you should investigate things in such a way that your consciousness as you investigate is not distracted by what you find, or diffused and scattered; neither is it fixed and set. For the one who is not swayed, there will be a transcending of birth, death, and time.
In this life Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
Live simply, Love generously, Care deeply, Speak kindly
"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."
~ Noah Webster
"The last great freedom of man is the freedom to choose his attitude under any given set of circumstances."
~ Victor Frankl, noted Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor
"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."
~ John Lennon
"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
~ Fr. Alfred D'Souza
"The size of a man (his wisdom) can be measured by the size of the things that make him angry."
These are all from Sri Chinmoy - not sure if he's Buddhist or not ... found at the poetseers site -
"We meditate for various reasons. Peace of mind we all badly need. Therefore, when we meditate, either consciously or unconsciously we aim at peace of mind. Meditation give us peace of mind without a tranquilliser. And unlike a tranquilliser, the peace of mind that we get from meditation does not fade away. It lasts for good in some corner of the inmost recesses of our aspiring heart."
"Meditation is acceptance. It is the acceptance of life within us, without us and all around us. Acceptance of life is the beginning of human satisfaction. Transformation of life is the culmination of divine satisfaction. "
"When we meditate we expand, spreading our wings like a bird, trying to enter consciously into Infinity, Eternity and Immortality, welcoming them into our aspiring consciousness. We see, feel and grow into the entire universe of Light-Delight."
"The meditation that gives you immediate joy or continuous joy is the best meditation for you. Everyone will not have the same meditation. Your meditation will not suit me, my meditation will not suit you. You like a certain food, I don't like it. You are right in your own way I am right in my own way. But once you know what your best meditation is, please stick to it."
"Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one. It reveals that life can never be the mere existence of seventy or eighty years between birth and death, but is, rather, Eternity itself."
"Why do we meditate? We meditate precisely because this world of ours has disappointed us and because failure looms large in our day-to-day life. We want fulfilment. We want joy, peace, bliss and perfection within and without. Meditation is the answer, the only answer."
Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.
None can live without toil and a craft that provides your needs is a blessing indeed. But if you toil without rest, fatigue and wearness will overtake you, and you will denied the joy that comes from labour's end.
Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.
Be near when help is needed, but far when praise and thanks are being offered. Take small account of might, wealth and fame, for they soon pass and are forgotten. Instead, nurture love within you and and strive to be a friend to all.
Truly, compassion is a balm for many wounds.
Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.
Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are. Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance.
If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.
You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remose nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on.
Faith is like a lamp and wisdom makes the flame burn bright. Carry this lamp always and in good time the darkness will yield and you will abide in the Light.
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
When ever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
Samsara-our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation.
"The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love."
~ Jennifer Edwards
View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.
~ Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"
"To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know."
~ Hsin Hsin Ming
"We could become quite satisfied with ourselves because we are sitting in meditation and are endeavoring to practice the spiritual path. Such satisfaction with ourselves is not the same as contentment. Contentment is necessary, self-satisfaction is detrimental. To be content has to include knowing we are in the right place at the right time to facilitate our own growth. But to be self-satisfied means that we no longer realize the need for growth. All these aspects are important parts of our commitment and makes us into one whole being with a one-pointed direction."
"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain or improving, and that’s your own self."
~ Aldous Huxley
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
~ Steve Jobs
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
~ Carl Jung
"Anything you want to ask a teacher, ask yourself, and wait for the answer in silence."
~ Byron Katie
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."
~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
May as well have one Buddhist quote -
"Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life."
Half the spiritual life consists of remembering what we are up against and where we are going.
~ Ayya Khema, "When the Iron Eagle Flies"
... And the other half is taking complete personal responsibility for getting there!
~ Joshua Bryer
Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?
All meditation must begin with arousing deep compassion. Whatever one does must emerge from an attitude of love and benefitting others.
All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.
~ Milarepa
After a few years of meditation practice we can even learn how to occasionally ignore ourselves. And what relief that can be!
~ Wes Nisker
One day I complained to Suzuki Roshi about the people I was working with. He listened intently. Finally he said, "If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind."
~ "To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shuryu Suzuki" (Edited by David Chadwick)
In fact, everything we encounter in this world with our six senses is an inkblot test. You see what you are thinking and feeling, seldom what you are looking at.
~ Shiqin
Through your love for each other, through learning the art of making one person happy, you learn to express your love for the whole of humanity and all beings. Please help us develop the curriculum for the Institute for the Happiness of One Person. Don't wait until we open the school. You can begin practicing right away.
The teachings tell us what it is we need to realize, but we also have to go on our own journey, in order to come to a personal realization. That journey may take us through suffering, difficulties, and doubts of all kinds, but they will become our greatest teachers. Through them we will learn the humility to recognize our limitations, and through them we will discover the inner strength and fearlessness we need to emerge from our old habits and set patterns, and surrender into the vaster vision of real freedom offered by the spiritual teachings.
When little obstacles crop up on the spiritual path, a good practitioner does not lose faith and begin to doubt, but has the discernment to recognize difficulties, whatever they may be, for what they are—just obstacles, and nothing more. It is the nature of things that when you recognize an obstacle as such, it ceases to be an obstacle. Equally, it is by failing to recognize an obstacle for what it is, and therefore taking it seriously, that it is empowered and solidified and becomes a real blockage.
These all come from the quote garden site - wortha visit or 2
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."
~ Thomas Szasz
He also said something along the lines that if you talk 2 God you are praying but if God talks 2 you you have schizophrenia.
"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."
~ Dr. Alexis Carrel
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber
"If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found."
~ Author Unknown
"If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions."
~ Author Unknown
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."
~ Henry David Thoreau
"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself."
Throughout the day, put the teachings into practice. In the evening examine what you have done, said, and thought during the day. Whatever was positive, dedicate the merit to all beings and vow to improve on it the next day. Whatever was negative, confess and promise to repair it. In this way, the best practitioners progress from day to day, the middling practitioners from month to month, and the least capable from year to year.
Try to maintain perfectly pure thoughts in all circumstances, so that even the most insignificant of your acts will preserve their positive energy until you attain enlightenment. A drop of water that falls into the ocean will last as long as the ocean itself.
We have a long journey to make through the six realms of samsara. We should approach the Dharma like a sailor making his meticulous preparations for a voyage around the world, and prepare ourselves properly for our far longer journey ...
Keep in mind the many beings who are suffering in the same way as you are, and pray that your suffering may absorb theirs, and that they may be liberated from all suffering. In this way, illness can teach us compassion.
~ from The Hundred Verses of Advice. Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most
Comments
Ego is the problem. Sometimes ego is very spoiled, like a child who is constantly throwing tantrums. Sometimes ego doesn't accept where we are. Sometimes ego doesn't accept who we are. Sometimes ego doesn't accept the way things are without any real complaint. So what do we do? There is nothing that we can do. Sometimes ego doesn't accept the fact that the sky is blue but there is nothing that we can do. You see. Sometimes ego doesn't accept that we are living on a planet that is permeated with natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, and other catastrophes. All we can do is accept that and learn how to surrender to the flow of all events.
~ Anam Thubten, No Self, No Problem
Cheers
— Benjamin Franklin
Just found these in my travels -
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep — not screaming, like the passengers in his car.
Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
For more, visit this interesting site:
yourdictionary funny quotes about living life
Or maybe -
basicjokes funny quotes about life
Peace ~ Love ~ Happiness
"But it, too, seemed immovable.
"As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.
"And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.
"From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world."
From the tombstone of an Anglican bishop in Westminster Abbey
The ONLY thing you can really change is yourself & that's tough enuf
Reminds me of a shorter quote -
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. by Mahatma Gandhi
Cheers
Do no harm to the earth, she is your mother.
Being is more important than having.
Never promote yourself at another's expense.
Hold life sacred; treat it with reverence.
Allow each person the digity of his or her labor.
Open your home to the wayfarer.
Be ready to receive your deepest dreams;
sometimes they are the speech of unblighted conscience.
Always make restitutions to the ones you have harmed.
Never think less of yourself than you are.
Never think that you are more than another.
~ Arthur Dobrin
Have agood one!
Cheers
~ found it in "The Complete Idiot's guide to meditation"
"If you seek liberation, you must have more than an intellectual understanding of suffering, its causes, and the antidotes; you must practice for this understanding to mature. Just as a deer shot by a hunter retreats into solitude to heal itself, so too, you should withdraw from all superfluous activity. At the very least, occasionally withdraw into solitude in order to practice. As a result, you may realize the one taste of reality and cut through the divisions created by delusion, attachment, and hatred. Once you have gained this realization, you become as fearless and powerful as a snow lion. You have then achieved the state of confidence. At this point, your own self-interest is fulfilled as you observe all phenomena as displays of awareness. Having brought your own inner transformation to perfection with the motivation of being of benefit to others, you are now fully capable of serving others' needs. This is the path of a true Dharma practitioner."
~ Karma Chagme from "A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga"
Have a good one!
~ from The Dalai Lama's Book of Wisdom
Cheers
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”
~ Marcel Pagnol
“Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
~ Stacey Charter
“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”
~ Robert Muller
“Many search for happiness as we look for a hat we wear on our heads.”
~ Nikolaus Lenus
“We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.”
~ Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
“Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.”
~ Charles M Schwab
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”
~ Denis Waitley
And finally, here's one from an actual real-life Buddhist -
“It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on."
~ Sharon Salzberg
Have a good one!
~ M. Scott Peck
Enjoy!
The next time you feel so angry you could scream, ask yourself: Who is making me angry? Perhaps the anger is subtly directed at yourself. When our expectations are not met, we tend to blame others and get angry. But is our discontent really their fault? Shantideva said that anger is the greatest evil because it is so destructive and can cause so much harm. The trained mind of the Bohdisattva, like a peaceful lake, is able to transcend anger. Even if people throw sparks into it, it doesn't explode because it's like water and not volatile. The untrained mind, on the other hand, can be likened to a big pool of gasoline. Every spark makes it explode. In life, there will always be sparks. But does there have to be an explosion? That's your responsibility. Nobody can make us angry if we have no seeds of anger left inside.
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Each of us is fully endowed with luminous Buddha-nature, the potential for awakened enlightenment. Tibetans firmly believe that there have been and still are many enlightened beings who walk among us. In fact, there are yogis living anonymously everywhere without calling attention to themselves. Spiritual giants are universally accepted as heroes in Tibet where the names that are remebered aren't those of sports figures, politicians or movie-stars. Ask any Tibetan about Milarepa, the eleventh century, cave-dwelling yogi-sage. As Tibet's most beloved poet, Milarepa gained enlightenement in a single lifetime. Every child has heard his spontaneous songs of joyous wisdom.
I highly recpommend it!
Cheers
— George Santayana
Here's one I found at the Brainyquote site -
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise.
~ William Blake
Have a good one!
Plenty more at the cool funny quotes site
Cheers
Found more of Blake at that site -
To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.
Have a good one!
~ Sylvia Boorstein
monk
~ Arthur H. Stainback
"Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently."
~ Palladas
"Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself but most of them were written for him."
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me."
~ Ashleigh Brilliant
"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
~ Guillaume Apollinaire
"We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."
~ Marie Beynon
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
~ Pablo Casals
"Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now."
~ Pema Chodron
"We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything."
~ Gary Craig
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."
~ Buddha
Have a good one!
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Cheers
~ Dan Millman
"Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?"
~ Rumi
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
~ Rumi
"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling."
~ Margaret Lee Runbeck
"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
~ Maya Angelou
"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed."
~ Bernard M. Baruch
"Life is a conspiracy to shower you with a nonstop feast of interesting experiences, all of which are designed to help you grow your intelligence, shed your pretensions, and master the art of ingenious love."
~ Rob Brezsny
"Live out of your imagination instead of your memory."
~ Les Brown
"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
Have a good one!
~ James Baldwin
"End your day by privately looking directly into your eyes in the mirror and saying, 'I love you!' Do this for thirty days and watch how you transform."
~ Mark Victor Hansen
"I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, to be shunned by everybody, to be just nobody [to no one]"
~ Mother Teresa of Avila 'My Life for the Poor'
"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
"Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
"There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect."
~ Nikki Giovanni
"When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
~ Albert Camus
"When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love."
~ Robert Fulghum
"There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem... It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you could be the happiest and most powerful being in the world..."
~ Emmet Fox
And let's have at least ONE Buddhist quote!
"Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation."
~ Sharon Salzberg
May you all be happy!
Enjoy!
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
"If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
~ Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness
Cheers
You can find more of Pema's thoughts at the fabulous Shambhala Sun site - try plugging the followin into Google -
Shambhala Sun Pema Chodron wisdom for difficult times
Have a good one!
Worth pluggin that into Google as well ...
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
~ Aristotle
"All the wonders you seek are within yourself."
~ Sir Thomas Brown
"The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song."
~ Ralph Brum
"The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position."
~ Leo Buscaglia
"Each one of us has all the wisdom and knowledge we ever need right within us. It is available to us through our intuitive mind, which is our connection with universal intelligence."
~ Shakti Gawain
And ... let's NOT forget the big guy -
"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings, and all beings in his own self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye."
~ Buddha
"Truths cannot be acquired from words out of other people’s mouths. Before Truths can be internalized, they must come from one’s own realizations and practices. Through a lifetime of personal practice, human beings are capable of revealing all of the secrets of the cosmic essence. You are your own best judge."
~ Buddha
Cheers
"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."
~ Ajahn Chah
"Sometimes it is difficult to find time to meditate each day. But we always have time to watch TV. We always have time to go shopping. We always have time to get a snack from the refrigerator. Why is it that the twenty-four hours run out when it is time to meditate? When we understand the value and effect of spiritual practice, it will become a high priority in our life, and when something is important, we find time for it. It's good to set up a daily meditation practice of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes in the morning. To do that, we may have to sacrifice fifteen or thirty minutes of television the previous evening in order to go to bed a little earlier. But compared to the benefit of practicing the Dharma, missing a little TV is not a big thing. In the same way that we always find time to eat because food nourishes our body, we will find time to meditate and recite prayers because they nourish us spiritually. When we respect ourselves spiritually, we respect ourselves as human beings. Nourishing ourselves spiritually then becomes a very important priority, and having time for it is easy."
~ Ven. Thubten Chodron, Taming the Mind
"Please don't be a dumb meditator, a thought-wiper trying not to think, falling into the extreme of trying not to do anything in life. This is quietism, not the wisdom of the Middle Way. This is much too simple minded. It is important to learn how to meditate, not to just do it without guidance or direction. That would be like throwing stones in the dark and hoping to hit a target. Learning and practice have to go hand in hand, or you'll find it as difficult as trying to climb a mountain either without legs and hands (practice) or without head and eyes (learning, guidance); for we actually need both on the spiritual journey. I mainly hope to educate people who really want to be authentic Bodhisattvas and Vajrayana practitioners and Buddhist practitioners seeking wisdom and enlightenment."
~ HH the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa
"One of the first places we can begin to enter the heart of wisdom is by noticing how quickly the mind likes to judge. By softening the tendency of cold, egocentric analyzing we take an important step into the peaceful reality of knowing one another beyond our karmic and social habits."
~ Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa
"My teacher often likens meditation practice to a river flowing through our life. In the early stages, like a mountain spring, our practice is fleeting and undeveloped. There may be a fair few leaps and crashes before we settle into a more regular rhythm. Little by little our practice continues to grow and mature until eventually it becomes like a vast river, attracting everything else to it, no longer a small trickle in our life, but the most compelling force of it. The river may still encounter obstacles, but they are of little consequence. It will simply flow over or around them, having developed a smooth, calm, but unstoppable momentum."
~ David Michie; Hurry Up and Meditate: Your Starter Kit for Inner Peace and Better Health
That's a book I can also recommend personally!
Have a good one!
~ Ajahn Chah
"Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion. Practice good-heartedness toward all beings. Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you. What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream. The trick is to have positive intention during the dream. This is the essential point. This is true spirituality."
~ Chakdud Tulku Rinpoche
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost."
~ Dalai Lama
"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.
Firstly, we should re-examine our own attitude towards others and constantly check ourselves to see whether we are practicing properly. Before pointing our finger at others we should point it towards ourselves. Secondly, we must be prepared to admit our faults and stand corrected."
~ Dalai Lama
"My Western friends often ask me for the quickest, easiest, most effective, and cheapest way of practising Dharma! I think to find such a way is impossible! Maybe that is a sign of failure!
We should realize that practising the Dharma is actually something that needs to be done twenty four hours a the day.That's why we make a distinction between actual meditation sessions and post meditation periods, the idea being that both while you are in the meditative session and also when you are out of it, you should be fully within the realm of Dharma practice. In fact, one could say that the post-meditation periods are the real test of the strength of your practice."
~ Guess who
"It is by fighting and triumphing over the enemies of the Buddha that we ourselves become Buddhas."
~ Daisaku Ikeda
"Everyone smiles in the same language."
~ Unknown
"If we couldn't laugh, we'd all go insane."
~ Jimmy Buffett
"They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me!"
~ Nathaniel Lee
"Do not scorn the person who is perpetually happy. He does know something you don't."
~ Paul Jones
"Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."
~ Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book,
"Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it."
~ Anthony J. D'Angelo
"We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified."
~ Aesop
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Have a good one!
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Answers from the Heart
"In Asian languages, the word for ‘mind’ and the word for ‘heart’ are the same word. So when we hear the word ‘mindfulness’, we have to inwardly also hear ‘heartfulness’ in order to grasp it even as a concept, and especially as a way of being."
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Bare awareness is not easy to develop and maintain because of the mind's disposition to be constantly preoccupied by thoughts. We easily lose attention because our mind is so busy. When we do, our emotional life can creep up on us and take us over. Without mindfulness, the capacity to maintain attention, disidentification is very difficult, and bare awareness even more so. Through meditation it is possible to cultivate a quiet, unintrusive awareness that greatly strengthens our capacity to remain with our feelings. We simply allow their presence without judging them, or needing to make them different.
The early stage of meditation focuses attention and cultivates mindfulness. Mindfulness is our capacity to watch and remain conscious as emotions, feelings, and thoughts arise. We may begin in meditation by observing the breath and gradually quietening the mind from the constant discursive chatter that interrupts our attention. In time a quality of bare awareness is established free from the conceptual confusion that discriminates and evaluates what arises and parcels it up in conceptual boxes of good or bad. Furthermore, this quiet awareness does not become pulled into the contents of mental activity and drown in their confusion."
~ Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra
When I teach meditation, I often begin by saying: “Bring your mind home. And release. And relax.”
To bring your mind home means to bring the mind into the state of Calm Abiding through the practice of mindfulness. In its deepest sense, to bring your mind home is to turn your mind inward and rest in the nature of mind. This itself is the highest meditation.
To release means to release the mind from its prison of grasping, since you recognize that all pain and fear and distress arise from the craving of the grasping mind. On a deeper level, the realization and confidence that arise from your growing understanding of the nature of mind inspire the profound and natural generosity that enables you to release all grasping from your heart, letting it free itself to melt away in the inspiration of meditation.
To relax means to be spacious and to relax the mind of its tensions. More deeply, you relax into the true nature of your mind, the state of Rigpa. It is like pouring a handful of sand onto a hot surface, and each grain settles of its own accord. This is how you relax into your true nature, letting all thoughts and emotions naturally subside and dissolve into the state of the nature of mind.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Chheers
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere.
To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
~ Montagnie
In Buddhist terms, death is a natural event. The Buddha encouraged us to observe, to contemplate. Funerals in northeast Thailand where I lived were very meaningful because we actually contemplated what happened. We could see the body, and it wasn't made up to look beautiful. They didn't put lipstick and powder on it. It was just a dead human body, and we meditated on that. We made conscious the reality: the death of the body is like this. This was not depressing or traumatic for me. When Ajahn Chah held these funerals, I didn't faint. I found it a very powerful experience.
I had never had such opportunities in the United States to really bring death and loss into consciousness and to really look at a dead human corpse. We live in a society that wants to deny and cover it up. It's not polite to even say the word death in public. We use euphemisms that make it less stark, less shocking. But awareness includes the whole process—from birth to death, from the peak moments of life to the worst, the climb up and the slide down. By reflecting and observing, we free ourselves from the fears, the reactions and the projections that we create around the flow of our lives, around our own bodies, around the loss of our loved ones.
When my own mother died, I was with the feeling of loss and grief. It can be witnessed. I wasn't afraid or trying to ignore my feelings. They interested me. To have this ability to really accept my feelings, I had to train myself, because my conditioning was the reverse. On a cultural level, I'd been conditioned to suppress feelings, to deny or ignore them. It has taken intentional, deliberate effort to look, observe and allow feelings of loss or grief into consciousness. This doesn't mean a grasping of feelings or wallowing in emotions. It's seeing things in terms of Dhamma. It is what it is. The death of one's mother is like this.
~ From: InquiringMind.com
Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch;
Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions.
If you have got to think about something —
Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death.
~ Gyalse Rinpoche
From a Buddhist point of view, the actual experience of death is very important. Although how or where we will be reborn is generally dependent on karmic forces, our state of mind at the time of death can influence the quality of our next rebirth. So at the moment of death, in spite of the great variety of karmas we have accumulated, if we make a special effort to generate a virtuous state of mind, we may strengthen and activate a virtuous karma, and so bring about a happy rebirth.
~ Dalai Lama
Cheers
~ Ayya Khema, "Be an Island"
Subhuti asked: 'You say, Honored One, that a follower of the way does not need to build up goodness and happiness. Why is that?'
The Buddha replied: 'Subhuti, a true follower will express goodness and happiness but will not be caught up in the concepts of goodness and happiness. That’s why I say that he does not need to build up goodness and happiness, which would only be concept traps, for goodness and happiness will be there without any idea of them.'
~ Diamond Sutra
May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and its causes.
May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from bias, attachment and anger.
~ Buddhist Prayer
Let one's thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world without any obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity.
~ Samyutta Nikaya
If you seek after truth, you should investigate things in such a way that your consciousness as you investigate is not distracted by what you find, or diffused and scattered; neither is it fixed and set. For the one who is not swayed, there will be a transcending of birth, death, and time.
~ Itivuttaka Sutta
Be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet is
fighting some kind of battle.
Live simply,
Love generously,
Care deeply,
Speak kindly
"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."
~ Noah Webster
"The last great freedom of man is the freedom to choose his attitude under any given set of circumstances."
~ Victor Frankl, noted Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor
"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."
~ John Lennon
"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
~ Fr. Alfred D'Souza
"The size of a man (his wisdom) can be measured by the size of the things that make him angry."
~ J.K. Morley
Have a good one!
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet soup?
If an atheist has to go to court, do they make him swear on the Bible?
Why are people so scared of mice, yet we all love Mickey Mouse?
Have you ever noticed that if you rearranged the letters in mother in law, they come out to Woman Hitler?
Isn't it funny how the word 'politics' is made up of the words 'poli' meaning 'many' in Latin, and 'tics' as in 'bloodsucking creatures’?
How come you play at a recital, but recite at a play?
Why is it when we talk to God we are praying, but when God talks to us we are put into the loony bin?
These all come from goodquotes funnythoughts - not exactly Buddhist but I liked em ...
"We meditate for various reasons. Peace of mind we all badly need. Therefore, when we meditate, either consciously or unconsciously we aim at peace of mind. Meditation give us peace of mind without a tranquilliser. And unlike a tranquilliser, the peace of mind that we get from meditation does not fade away. It lasts for good in some corner of the inmost recesses of our aspiring heart."
"Meditation is acceptance. It is the acceptance of life within us, without us and all around us. Acceptance of life is the beginning of human satisfaction. Transformation of life is the culmination of divine satisfaction. "
"When we meditate we expand, spreading our wings like a bird, trying to enter consciously into Infinity, Eternity and Immortality, welcoming them into our aspiring consciousness. We see, feel and grow into the entire universe of Light-Delight."
"The meditation that gives you immediate joy or continuous joy is the best meditation for you. Everyone will not have the same meditation. Your meditation will not suit me, my meditation will not suit you. You like a certain food, I don't like it. You are right in your own way I am right in my own way. But once you know what your best meditation is, please stick to it."
"Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one. It reveals that life can never be the mere existence of seventy or eighty years between birth and death, but is, rather, Eternity itself."
"Why do we meditate? We meditate precisely because this world of ours has disappointed us and because failure looms large in our day-to-day life. We want fulfilment. We want joy, peace, bliss and perfection within and without. Meditation is the answer, the only answer."
Have a good one!
How much is enough?
Its never enough.
Ajahn brahm.
Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.
None can live without toil and a craft that provides your needs is a blessing indeed. But if you toil without rest, fatigue and wearness will overtake you, and you will denied the joy that comes from labour's end.
Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.
Be near when help is needed, but far when praise and thanks are being offered.
Take small account of might, wealth and fame, for they soon pass and are forgotten. Instead, nurture love within you and and strive to be a friend to all.
Truly, compassion is a balm for many wounds.
Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.
Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are.
Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance.
If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.
You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remose nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on.
Faith is like a lamp and wisdom makes the flame burn bright. Carry this lamp always and in good time the darkness will yield and you will abide in the Light.
~ Dhammavadaka
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
When ever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
Samsara-our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation.
Have a good one!
we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change.
So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger,
but in wisdom, understanding and love."
~ Jennifer Edwards
View all problems as challenges.
Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow.
Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence.
You have a problem? Great.
More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.
~ Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"
"To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know."
~ Hsin Hsin Ming
"We could become quite satisfied with ourselves because we are sitting in meditation and are endeavoring to practice the spiritual path. Such satisfaction with ourselves is not the same as contentment. Contentment is necessary, self-satisfaction is detrimental. To be content has to include knowing we are in the right place at the right time to facilitate our own growth. But to be self-satisfied means that we no longer realize the need for growth. All these aspects are important parts of our commitment and makes us into one whole being with a one-pointed direction."
~ Ayya Khema
Cheers
~ Aldous Huxley
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
~ Steve Jobs
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
~ Carl Jung
"Anything you want to ask a teacher, ask yourself, and wait for the answer in silence."
~ Byron Katie
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."
~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
May as well have one Buddhist quote -
"Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life."
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
~ Ayya Khema, "When the Iron Eagle Flies"
... And the other half is taking complete personal responsibility for getting there!
~ Joshua Bryer
Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning?
Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?
All meditation must begin with arousing deep compassion.
Whatever one does must emerge from an attitude of love and benefitting others.
All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.
~ Milarepa
After a few years of meditation practice we can even learn how to occasionally ignore ourselves. And what relief that can be!
~ Wes Nisker
One day I complained to Suzuki Roshi about the people I was working with.
He listened intently.
Finally he said, "If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind."
~ "To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shuryu Suzuki" (Edited by David Chadwick)
In fact, everything we encounter in this world with our six senses is an inkblot test.
You see what you are thinking and feeling, seldom what you are looking at.
~ Shiqin
Through your love for each other, through learning the art of making one person happy, you learn to express your love for the whole of humanity and all beings.
Please help us develop the curriculum for the Institute for the Happiness of One Person.
Don't wait until we open the school.
You can begin practicing right away.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Have a good one!
When little obstacles crop up on the spiritual path, a good practitioner does not lose faith and begin to doubt, but has the discernment to recognize difficulties, whatever they may be, for what they are—just obstacles, and nothing more. It is the nature of things that when you recognize an obstacle as such, it ceases to be an obstacle. Equally, it is by failing to recognize an obstacle for what it is, and therefore taking it seriously, that it is empowered and solidified and becomes a real blockage.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Cheers
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."
~ Thomas Szasz
He also said something along the lines that if you talk 2 God you are praying but if God talks 2 you you have schizophrenia.
"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."
~ Dr. Alexis Carrel
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber
"If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found."
~ Author Unknown
"If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions."
~ Author Unknown
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."
~ Henry David Thoreau
"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself."
~ William Butler Yeats
Ciao 4 now ...
No quote this time but try pluggin the following into Google -
365 thought provoking questions to ask yourself
Trust me it's worth it!
Cheers
Try to maintain perfectly pure thoughts in all circumstances, so that even the most insignificant of your acts will preserve their positive energy until you attain enlightenment. A drop of water that falls into the ocean will last as long as the ocean itself.
We have a long journey to make through the six realms of samsara. We should approach the Dharma like a sailor making his meticulous preparations for a voyage around the world, and prepare ourselves properly for our far longer journey ...
Keep in mind the many beings who are suffering in the same way as you are, and pray that your suffering may absorb theirs, and that they may be liberated from all suffering. In this way, illness can teach us compassion.
~ from The Hundred Verses of Advice. Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most
Have a good one!