“Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.”
—Shirley Maclaine
March 2012
18 posts
“We have to move from the illusion of certainty to the certainty of illusion.”
—Sam Keen
“What can be described is the known, and the freedom from the known can come into being only when there is a dying every day to the known, to the hurts, the flatteries, to all the images you have made, to all your experiences— dying every day so that the brain cells themselves become fresh, young, innocent.”
—Jiddu Krishnamurti, “A Still Mind”
“When challenges or obstacles arise for us, we don’t have to get so intimidated; we can say, ‘Yes, it’s an obstacle, but it is not intrinsically bad; it’s not going to destroy me.’ To create a relationship with the obstacle, learn about it, and finally overcome it is going to be a helpful thing to do. It gives us a chance to cultivate wisdom and skillful means. It gives us confidence. We cannot eliminate all of the challenges or obstacles in life—our own or anyone else’s. We can only learn to rise to the occasion and face them.”
—Dzigar Kongtrul, “Old Relationships, New Possibilities”
“The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing - to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
—John Keats
“The crucial point is to maintain constant vigilance over and awareness of our mental state so that, at the moment that afflictive emotions rise up, they will not trigger a chain of deluded thoughts. Thus, we neither let desire overwhelm our mind, nor do we repress it while leaving it intact in a hidden corner of the mind. We simply become free from its alienating power.”
—Matthieu Ricard, “Working with Desire”
“Loss is a fact of life. Impermanence is everywhere we look. We are all going to suffer our losses. How we deal with these losses is what makes all the difference. For it is not what happens to us that determines our character, our experience, our karma, and our destiny, but how we relate to what happens.”
—Lama Surya Das, “Practicing With Loss”
“Unwilling to fully live the life that is arriving in our bodies moment by moment, we find ourselves left with no real life at all. In our state of disembodied dissatisfaction we may think, ‘I feel like I’m disconnected. Maybe I need to change my job, or change my relationship, maybe, maybe, maybe.’ But the fact is that the fullness of our human existence is already happening all the time.”
—Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment”
“Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just somebody’s opinion. Like a dog barking. American dog say, ‘Woof, woof.’ Korean dog say, ‘Mung, mung.’ Polish dog say, ‘How, how.’ So which dog barking is correct? That is human beings’ barking, not ‘dog’ barking. If dog and you become one hundred percent one, then you know sound of barking. This is Zen teaching. Boom! Become one.”
—Seung Sahn, “BOOM!”
Your story
“I’m not saying that you should deny the difficult events of your life. But the fact that you survived is also a wonderful story to tell. And that story, the story of the way you came through a difficult situation, found resources within yourself or outside of yourself, gleaned from that experience what you wanted and what you didn’t want going forward — that is a story that can inspire you and others to heal and grow.”
“Instead of thinking of this and that, one thing after the other, let your mind recognize itself in a single moment. When the mind recognizes itself, there is no thing to see there. It’s just wide open. That’s because the essence of mind is empty. It’s wide open and free.”
—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, “Dissolving the Confusion”
“What should you do to put your body to good use? Most people have no idea. A craftsman who borrows some tools will try to make the best possible use of them while they are available. Your body, too, is actually on loan to you for the time being, for the brief period left before it is taken back from you by death. Had you better not use it to practice the dharma while you can?”
—Dilgo Khyentse, “The Day After You Die”
“Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die.”
—Basho
“Sometimes when I’m asked to describe the Buddhist teachings, I say this: Everything is connected; nothing lasts; you are not alone. This is really just a restatement of the traditional Three Marks of Existence: non-self, impermanence, and suffering. The fact that we all suffer means we are all in the same boat, and that’s what allows us to feel compassion.”
—Lewis Richmond, “The Authentic Life”
“Even on a small scale in daily life situations, such as when we feel bored or ill at ease, instead of trying to avoid these feelings by staying busy or buying another fancy gadget, we learn to look more clearly at our impulses, attitudes, and defenses. In this way dukkha guides and deepens our motivation to the point where we’ll say, ‘Enough running, enough walls, I’ll grow through handling my blocks and lost places.’”
—Ajahn Sucitto, “From Turning the Wheel of Truth: Commentary on the Buddha’s First Teaching”
February 2012
26 posts
“The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh
