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"Even if the rain-god rained all seven kinds Of gems, until earth and heaven were full, Still senses would crave and men die unsatiated." - Bhikkhuni Sumedha, Therigatha
How do you like zazen? I think it may be better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic. Brown rice is just right. Actually, there is not much difference. When you eat brown rice, you have to chew it, and unless you chew it, it is difficult to swallow.
Compassion is empathy - the "trembling" of the heart in response to suffering. We bear witness to others' pain and hearteache, neither turning away out of fear or disgust nor wallowing in sentimentality or excessive grief.
~ comes from a great little book called "Coffee with the Buddha" by Joan Oliver
“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 Chödrön
For more of Pema -
Try pluggin the followin into google -
goodreads pema chodron
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
~ Pema Chodron
I HIGHLY recommend her book "When things fall apart".
May I hold them dear - for they are rare to find -
As if I have discovered a jewel treasure!
This verse refers to the special case of relating to people who are socially marginalised, perhaps because of their behaviour, their appearance, their destitution, or on account of some illness. Whoever practices bodhichitta must take special care of these people, as if, on meeting them, you have found a real treasure. Instead of feeling repulsed, a true practitioner of these altruistic principles should engage and take on the challenge of relating. In fact, the way we interact with people of this kind could give a great impetus to our spiritual practice.
Imagine that you had gone all your life without ever washing, and then one day you decide to take a shower. You start scrubbing away, but then watch in horror as the dirt begins to ooze out of the pores of your skin and stream down your body. Something must be wrong: You were supposed to be getting cleaner and all you can see is grime. You panic and fling yourself out of the shower, convinced that you should never have begun. But you only end up even more dirty than before. You have no way of knowing that the wisest thing to do is to be patient and to finish the shower. It may look for a while as if you are getting even dirtier, but if you keep on washing, you will emerge fresh and clean. It's all a process, the process of purification.
"When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
For more of his writing - plug the followin into Google -
"You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round..... The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours....
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. "
"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
"Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. "We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."
Friend do it this way - that is, whatever you do in life, do the very best you can with both your heart and mind.
And if you do it that way, the Power Of The Universe will come to your assistance, if your heart and mind are in Unity.
When one sits in the Hoop Of The People, one must be responsible because All of Creation is related. And the hurt of one is the hurt of all. And the honor of one is the honor of all. And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.
If you do it that way - that is, if you truly join your heart and mind as One - whatever you ask for, that's the Way It's Going To Be.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
The followin quotes come from a neat little site called Buddhist quote of the moment -
The experience of the practice itself teaches us that any conception or ideal of awakened being can only be a hindrance - neither practice nor awakening is about ideas or images. And yet, however limited the finger-pointing at the moon, still we point, we turn to one another for direction. So I have come to think that if the bodhisattva's task is to continue to practice until every pebble, every blade of grass, awakens, surely the passions, difficult or blissful, can also be included in that vow. And if awakening is also already present, inescapably and everywhere present from the beginning, how can the emotions not be part of that singing life of grasses and fish and oil tankers and subways and cats in heat who wake us, furious and smiling, in the middle of the brief summer night?
~ Jane Hirshfield, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #3
The near enemies are qualities that arise in the mind and masquerade as genuine spiritual realization, when in fact they are only an imitation, servin to separate us from true feeling rather than connecting us to it...
The near enemy of lovingkindness is attachment...At first, attachment may feel like love, but as it grows it becomes more clearly the opposite, characterized by clinging, controlling, and fear.
The near enemy of compassion is pity, and this also separates us. Pity feels sorry for "that poor person over there," as if he were somehow different from us...
The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another...
The near enemy of equanimity is indifference. True equanimity is balance in the midst of experience, whereas indifference is a withdrawal and not caring, based on fear...
If we do not recognize and understand the near enemies, they will deaden our spiritual practice. The compartments they make cannot shield us for long from the pain and unpredictability of life, but they will surely stifle the joy and open connectedness of true relationships.
~ Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
The purpose of meditation is not to concentrate on the breath, without interruption, forever. That by itself would be a useless goal. The purpose of meditation is not to achieve a perfectly still and serene mind. Although a lovely state, it doesn't lead to liberation by itself. The purpose of meditation is to achieve uninterrupted mindfulness. Mindfulness, and only mindfulness, produces Enlightenment.
Distractions come in all sizes, shapes and flavors. Buddhist philosophy has organized them into categories. One of them is the category of hindrances. They are called hindrances because they block your development of both components of meditation, mindfulness and concentration. A bit of caution on this term: The word "hindrances" carries a negative connotation, and indeed these are states of mind we want to eradicate. That does not mean, however, that they are to be repressed, avoided, or condemned.
Let's use greed as an example. We wish to avoid prolonging any state of greed that arises, because a continuation of that state leads to bondage and sorrow. That does not mean we try to toss the thought out of the mind when it appears. We simply refuse to encourage it to stay. We let it come, and we let it go.
~ Henepola Gunaratna, Mindfulness in Plain English
"People often confuse meditation with prayer, devotion, or vision. They are not the same. Meditation as a practice does not address itself to a deity or present itself as an opportunity for revelation. This is not to say that people who are meditating do not occasionally think they have recieved a revelation or experienced visions. They do. But to those for whom meditation is their central practice, a vision or a revelation is seen as just another phenemenon of consciousness and as such is not to be taken as exceptional. The meditator would simply experience the ground of consciousness, and in doing so avoid excluding or excessively elevating any thought or feeling. To do this one must release all sense of the "I" that might think it is privileged to communicate with the divine."
~ Gary Snyder, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. I, #1
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbein g" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefi x "Inter-" with the verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter- be....
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. Th is is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that ev erything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here - time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the s unshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists with this sheet of paper.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
Most writings on the doctrine of karma emphasize the strict lawfulness governing karmic actions, ensuring a close correspondence between our deeds and their fruits. While this emphasis is perfectly in place, there is another side to the working of karma - a side rarely noted, but so important that it deserves to be stressed and discussed as an explicit theme in itself. This is the modifiability of karma, the fact that the lawlessness which governs karma does not operate with mechanical rigidity but allows for a considerable wide range of modifications in the ripening of the fruit.
If karmic action were always to bear fruits of invariably the same magnitude, and if modification or annulment of karma-result were excluded, liberation from the samsaric cycle of suffering would be impossible; for an inexhaustiible past would ever throw up new obstructive results of unwholesome karma.
~ Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
It is possible to take our existence as a "sacred world," to take this place as open space rather than claustrophobic dark void. It is possible to take a friendly relationship to our ego natures, it is possible to appreciate the aesthetic play of forms in emptiness, and to exist in this place like majestic kings of our own consciousness. But to do that, we would have to give up grasping to make everything come out the way we daydream it should. So, suffering is caused by ignorance, or suffering exagerated by ignorance or ignorant grasping and clinging to our notion of what we think should be, is what causes the "suffering of suffering." The suffering itself is not so bad, it's the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.
~ Allen Ginsberg, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Intelligent practice always deal with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field. I don't want to be that. So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our verison of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.
"Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbour's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind."
"My basic belief is that you first need to realize the uselfulness of compassion," he said with a tone of conviction. "That's the key factor. Once you accept the fact that compassion is not something chilish or sentimental, once you realize that compassion is something really worthwhile, realize its deeper value, then you immediately develop an attraction toward it, a willingness 2 cultivate it."
------------------------------------------------
The ultimate benefit of a supple mind is that it allows us to embrace all of life - to be fully alive and human.
------------------------------------------------
Without cultivating a pliant mind our outlook becomes brittle and our relationship to the world becomes characterised by fear. But by adopting a flexible, malleable approach to life, we can maintain our composure even in the most restless and turbulent conditions. It is through our efforts to acheive a flexible mind that we can nurture the resiliency of the human spirit.
"You should always speak and do things with mindfulness of loving-kindness."
~ Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
“To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities.”
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
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.
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
"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.
Comments
For more ... try plugging the following into Google -
Quote garden happiness
Of gems, until earth and heaven were full,
Still senses would crave and men die unsatiated."
- Bhikkhuni Sumedha, Therigatha
Voltaire
-- Thicht Nhat Hanh
Leonardo Da Vinci
- Blood of the Martyr
Flavor text on a Magic the Gathering card.
The cowboy guy in The Big Lebowski
Jeff Bridges is co-writing a book called "The Dude and the Zen Master"...should be interesting, to say the least.
On habit- "Until the track is repaired, the train will wreck again and again, no matter how smart the engineer".
"Who am I?" and "What am I doing?" are really the same question. With the same answer.
I cannot change the world; I can only change myself, and in so doing, change the world.
~ comes from a great little book called "Coffee with the Buddha" by Joan Oliver
― Pema Chödrön
For more of Pema -
Try pluggin the followin into google -
goodreads pema chodron
Here's one more -
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
~ Pema Chodron
I HIGHLY recommend her book "When things fall apart".
Have a good one!
~ Ashleigh Brilliant
Oppressed by strong negativity and suffering,
May I hold them dear - for they are rare to find -
As if I have discovered a jewel treasure!
This verse refers to the special case of relating to people who are socially marginalised, perhaps because of their behaviour, their appearance, their destitution, or on account of some illness. Whoever practices bodhichitta must take special care of these people, as if, on meeting them, you have found a real treasure. Instead of feeling repulsed, a true practitioner of these altruistic principles should engage and take on the challenge of relating. In fact, the way we interact with people of this kind could give a great impetus to our spiritual practice.
Comes from The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Wisdom
Tosh, circa 1995
~ Zen proverb
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Have a good one!
~ Nathaniel Lee
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
For more of his writing - plug the followin into Google -
think exist Thich Nhat Hanh
It's one HUGE quotes site!
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. "
Black Elk Oglala Sioux Holy Man
Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator
Chief Maquinna, Nootka
Friend do it this way - that is,
whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can
with both your heart and mind.
And if you do it that way,
the Power Of The Universe
will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in Unity.
When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because
All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.
If you do it that way - that is,
if you truly join your heart and mind
as One - whatever you ask for,
that's the Way It's Going To Be.
passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
Chief Seattle, 1854
I saw more than I can tell,
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shapes of things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must
live together like one being.
Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks
I also enjoy Native American wwisdom ...
~ Anon
The experience of the practice itself teaches us that any conception or ideal of awakened being can only be a hindrance - neither practice nor awakening is about ideas or images. And yet, however limited the finger-pointing at the moon, still we point, we turn to one another for direction. So I have come to think that if the bodhisattva's task is to continue to practice until every pebble, every blade of grass, awakens, surely the passions, difficult or blissful, can also be included in that vow. And if awakening is also already present, inescapably and everywhere present from the beginning, how can the emotions not be part of that singing life of grasses and fish and oil tankers and subways and cats in heat who wake us, furious and smiling, in the middle of the brief summer night?
~ Jane Hirshfield, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #3
The near enemies are qualities that arise in the mind and masquerade as genuine spiritual realization, when in fact they are only an imitation, servin to separate us from true feeling rather than connecting us to it...
The near enemy of lovingkindness is attachment...At first, attachment may feel like love, but as it grows it becomes more clearly the opposite, characterized by clinging, controlling, and fear.
The near enemy of compassion is pity, and this also separates us. Pity feels sorry for "that poor person over there," as if he were somehow different from us...
The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another...
The near enemy of equanimity is indifference. True equanimity is balance in the midst of experience, whereas indifference is a withdrawal and not caring, based on fear...
If we do not recognize and understand the near enemies, they will deaden our spiritual practice. The compartments they make cannot shield us for long from the pain and unpredictability of life, but they will surely stifle the joy and open connectedness of true relationships.
~ Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
The purpose of meditation is not to concentrate on the breath, without interruption, forever. That by itself would be a useless goal. The purpose of meditation is not to achieve a perfectly still and serene mind. Although a lovely state, it doesn't lead to liberation by itself. The purpose of meditation is to achieve uninterrupted mindfulness. Mindfulness, and only mindfulness, produces Enlightenment.
Distractions come in all sizes, shapes and flavors. Buddhist philosophy has organized them into categories. One of them is the category of hindrances. They are called hindrances because they block your development of both components of meditation, mindfulness and concentration. A bit of caution on this term: The word "hindrances" carries a negative connotation, and indeed these are states of mind we want to eradicate. That does not mean, however, that they are to be repressed, avoided, or condemned.
Let's use greed as an example. We wish to avoid prolonging any state of greed that arises, because a continuation of that state leads to bondage and sorrow. That does not mean we try to toss the thought out of the mind when it appears. We simply refuse to encourage it to stay. We let it come, and we let it go.
~ Henepola Gunaratna, Mindfulness in Plain English
"People often confuse meditation with prayer, devotion, or vision. They are not the same. Meditation as a practice does not address itself to a deity or present itself as an opportunity for revelation. This is not to say that people who are meditating do not occasionally think they have recieved a revelation or experienced visions. They do. But to those for whom meditation is their central practice, a vision or a revelation is seen as just another phenemenon of consciousness and as such is not to be taken as exceptional. The meditator would simply experience the ground of consciousness, and in doing so avoid excluding or excessively elevating any thought or feeling. To do this one must release all sense of the "I" that might think it is privileged to communicate with the divine."
~ Gary Snyder, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. I, #1
Have agood one!
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbein g" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefi x "Inter-" with the verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter- be....
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. Th is is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that ev erything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here - time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the s unshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists with this sheet of paper.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
Most writings on the doctrine of karma emphasize the strict lawfulness governing karmic actions, ensuring a close correspondence between our deeds and their fruits. While this emphasis is perfectly in place, there is another side to the working of karma - a side rarely noted, but so important that it deserves to be stressed and discussed as an explicit theme in itself. This is the modifiability of karma, the fact that the lawlessness which governs karma does not operate with mechanical rigidity but allows for a considerable wide range of modifications in the ripening of the fruit.
If karmic action were always to bear fruits of invariably the same magnitude, and if modification or annulment of karma-result were excluded, liberation from the samsaric cycle of suffering would be impossible; for an inexhaustiible past would ever throw up new obstructive results of unwholesome karma.
~ Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
It is possible to take our existence as a "sacred world," to take this place as open space rather than claustrophobic dark void. It is possible to take a friendly relationship to our ego natures, it is possible to appreciate the aesthetic play of forms in emptiness, and to exist in this place like majestic kings of our own consciousness. But to do that, we would have to give up grasping to make everything come out the way we daydream it should. So, suffering is caused by ignorance, or suffering exagerated by ignorance or ignorant grasping and clinging to our notion of what we think should be, is what causes the "suffering of suffering." The suffering itself is not so bad, it's the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.
~ Allen Ginsberg, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Intelligent practice always deal with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field. I don't want to be that. So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our verison of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
Have a good one!
~ St. Frances de Sales
"To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand."
– Jose Ortega y Gasset
"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder."
– M.C. Escher
"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting
for our wits to grow sharper."
– Eden Phillpotts
"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
– Julia Cameron
"You can observe a lot by watching."
– Yogi Berra
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
– Albert Einstein
"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it."
– Henry Emerson Fosdick
"My basic belief is that you first need to realize the uselfulness of compassion," he said with a tone of conviction. "That's the key factor. Once you accept the fact that compassion is not something chilish or sentimental, once you realize that compassion is something really worthwhile, realize its deeper value, then you immediately develop an attraction toward it, a willingness 2 cultivate it."
------------------------------------------------
The ultimate benefit of a supple mind is that it allows us to embrace all of life - to be fully alive and human.
------------------------------------------------
Without cultivating a pliant mind our outlook becomes brittle and our relationship to the world becomes characterised by fear. But by adopting a flexible, malleable approach to life, we can maintain our composure even in the most restless and turbulent conditions. It is through our efforts to acheive a flexible mind that we can nurture the resiliency of the human spirit.
~ Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
“To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities.”
~ Dalai Lama
Willa Cather
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
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free spiritual guidance Famous Buddha Quotes
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~ Anon
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
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.
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
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rudyh dalai lama quotes quotations
Much more at that site!
~ Anon
- Swedish Proverb
For more -
Love Quotes quotestoliveby4u
~ Dale Carnegie
- worth pluggin into google ...
Cheers
~ John Kornfield
- Sogyal Rinpoche