“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”

Comments: Click to comment

“When you don’t understand the nature and origin of your thoughts, your thoughts use you. When the Buddha recognized the nature of his mind, he reversed the process. He showed us how we use our thoughts instead of being used by them.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Buddhist training offers an alternative approach to experiencing life from an essentially fear-based perspective of survival in favor of experiencing it as a parade of odd and wonderful things.”

Comments: Click to comment

“There is no greater inspiration, no greater courage, than the intention to lead all beings to the perfect freedom and complete well-being of recognizing their true nature.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Happiness and unhappiness are not primarily created by the material world or the physical body. First and foremost, they are decisions of the mind… The quickest route to happiness is to help others.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The mind is always moving, always processing new ideas, new perceptions, and new sensations. That’s its job… There’s no difference between what is seen and the mind that sees it.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Meditation is about learning to recognize our basic goodness in the immediacy of the present moment, and then nurturing this recognition until it seeps into the very core of our being”

Comments: Click to comment

“Instead of rejecting the problems and emotions, or surrendering to them, we can befriend them, working through them to reach an enduring, authentic experience of our inherent wisdom, confidence, clarity, and joy.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Freedom rarely arrives in the form we think it should… For most of us, freedom feels not only unfamiliar but distinctly unpleasant. That’s because we’re used to our chains. They might chafe, they might make us bleed, but at least they’re familiar.”

Comments: Click to comment

“You can break down the present into smaller and smaller increments, but between the instant of present experience and the instant you identify that instant as 'now', the moment has already passed. It is not longer now. It’s then.”

Comments: Click to comment

“You don’t have to block whatever thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise, but neither do you have to follow them. Just rest in the open present, simply allowing whatever happens

Comments: Click to comment

“Even though thoughts and emotions come and go, the mind’s natural clarity is never disturbed or interrupted… Just as space isn’t defined by the objects that move through it, awareness isn’t defined by what it apprehends.”

Comments: Click to comment

“most people end up blaming either external conditions or themselves. However, because it reflects a loss of confidence in oneself, blame only makes the search for happiness more difficult”

Comments: Click to comment

“Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Rejoicing in the success of others means letting go of competitiveness, jealousy, and envy”

Comments: Click to comment

“What happens when you begin to recognize your experiences as your own projections? … from one point of view—nothing. From another point of view—everything.”

Comments: Click to comment

“We are born buddhas, and all dharma practices help us recognize and nurture this truth.”

Comments: Click to comment

“When we take the time to look at the way we see things, the way we see things changes… Just by changing your perspective, you can not only alter your own experience, you can change the world.”

Comments: Click to comment

“liberated from the tyranny of the monkey-mind… awareness itself allows us to stand at the river’s edge without getting sucked into the current. Thoughts are still there but we have stopped identifying with them. We have become the awareness, not the thoughts”

Comments: Click to comment

“The more deeply we examine our minds, the less possible it becomes to find a clear distinction between where our own mind ends and other’s begin.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Compassion is the spontaneous wisdom of the heart. It’s always with us. It always has been, and always will be.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The essence of bodhichitta is the heart that thinks, I alone, personally, will establish all sentient beings in the state of complete enlightenment.”

Comments: Click to comment

Comments: Click to comment

“The mind of letting go has the capacity to cut the root of ego-clinging; the activity of letting go accumulates merit. And by letting go, we gain access to our own immense inner wealth,”

Comments: Click to comment

“Meditation is about learning to work with the mind as it is, not about trying to force it into some sort of Buddhist straitjacket.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The essence of meditation practice is to let go of all your expectations about meditation…”

Comments: Click to comment

“Everywhere the mind goes, the opportunity for meditation exists. The idea that meditation is something that we only do sitting on a cushion in a particular way or at a particular time has created a lot of confusion… we can recognize awareness anywhere, anytime”

Comments: Click to comment

“The more we allow ourselves to be guided by compassion—to pause for a moment and try to see where another person is coming from—the less likely we are to engage in conflict.”

Comments: Click to comment

“In a sense, we’re homesick for our true nature.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Modern science—specifically quantum physics and neuroscience—offers an approach to wisdom in terms that are at once more acceptable and more specifically demonstrable to people living in the 21st century than are the Buddhist insigns into the nature of reality gained through subjective analysis.”

from Joy of Living, 2007

Comments: Click to comment

“The definition of emptiness as 'infinite possibility' is a basic description of a very complicated term... whatever arises out of this infinite potential doesn't truly exist as a 'thing' in itself, but is rather the result of numerous causes and conditions.”

from Joy of Living, 2007

Comments: Click to comment

“Sadly, the influence of conditioning is so strong that we rarely remember that we can step back. And because our understanding is limited, we mistake the little part we do see for the whole truth.”

from Joy of Living, 2007

Comments: Click to comment

“everyone just wants to be happy. The truly sad thing is that most people seek happiness in ways that actually sabotage their attempts. If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion.”

from Joy of Living, 2007

Comments: Click to comment

“Ignorance is a fundamental inability to recognize the infinite potential, clarity, and power of our own minds… ignorance distorts the basically open experience of awareness into dualistic distinctions between inherently existing categories of ‘self’ and ‘other.’”

from Joy of Living

Comments: Click to comment

“In spite of your fears, no matter what happens to your physical body, your true nature is essentially indestructible.”

from Joy of Living, 2007

Comments: Click to comment

“an utterly direct expansion of the heart... Compassion is a spontaneous feeling of connection with all living things. What you feel, I feel; what I eel, you feel. There's no difference between us.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“When you can't describe a powerful experience in words anymore, it's a sign of progress. It means you've at least dipped your toes into the realm of the ineffable vastness of your true nature, a very brave step that many people, too comfortable with the familiarity of their discontent, lack the courage to take.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“On a purely emotional level, aversion tends to manifest as anger and even hatred. Instead of recognizing that whatever unhappiness you feel is based on a mentally constructed image, you find it only 'natural' to blame other people, external objects, or situations for your pain.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“The notion of a lasting, independently existing self urges us to expend enormous effort in resisting the inevitability of change making sure this 'self' remains safe and secure. When we've achieved some condition that makes us feel whole and complete, we want everything to stay exactly as it is. The deeper our attachment to whatever provides us with this sense of completeness, the greater our fear of losing it, and the more brutal our pain if we do lose it.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“The only difference between meditation and ordinary social interaction is that the friend you're gradually coming to know is yourself.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“As long as we don't recognize our real nature, we suffer. When we recognize our nature, we become free from suffering... Things you never dreamed possible begin to happen.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“Everything we perceive is a reconstruction created in the mind... there's not difference between what is seen and the mind that sees it.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“Everything you think, everything you say, and everything you do is reflected back to you as your own experience. If you cause someone pain, you experience pain ten times worse. If you promote others' happiness and well-being, you experience the same happiness ten times over. If your own mind is calm, then the people around you will experience a similar degree of calmness.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“the essence of meditation practice is to let go of all your expectations about meditation”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“The mind itself—not a 'thing' but an event—and the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that arise, abide and disappear in the mind are equal expressions of emptiness, that is, the open-ended possibility for anything to occur.”

from The Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“But it takes great patience to learn how to see such possibilities. In fact, it takes great patience to see.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“People who have invested a sincere effort in exploring their inner wealth naturally tend to develop a certain kind of fame, respect, and credibility... Their success in the world has nothing to do with personal ambition... It stems, rather, from a spacious and relaxed state of well-being, which allows them to see people and situations more clearly, but also to maintain a basic sense of happiness regardless of their personal circumstances.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“In spite of their wealth and power, they swim in an ocean of pain, which is sometimes so deep that suicide seems the only escape. Such intense pain results from believing that objects or situations can create lasting happiness.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“Because pain and discomfort are such direct sensations, they're actually very effective objects of meditative focus... we can use such sensations to increase our capacity for clarity, simply through washing the mind deal with various solutions.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“Just watch a child playing a video game, obsessed with pushing buttons to kill enemies and win points, and you'll see how addictive such games can be. Then take a step back and see how the financial, romantic, or other 'games' you've been playing as an adult are just as addictive.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“If you can recognize while caught up in a dream that you're only dreaming, you can do anything you like within the dream... Most people go through waking life caught up in the same delusions of limitation and entrapment they experience in their dreams.”

from Joy of Living (2007)

Comments: Click to comment

“The confusion that arises when we cling to our beliefs and expectations obscures the innate clarity of our awakened minds... this confused, conceptual mind simply does not have the capacity to understand mind beyond concepts.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Awareness is the essence of our existence... our greatest treasure and we already have it... It is within our reach all the time, and yet most of us do not recognize that.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“The less we know about the chattering, muttering voice in our heads that tells us what to do, what to believe, what to buy, which people we should love, and so forth, the more power we give it to boss us around and convince us that whatever it says is true.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Ego is not an object; it's more like a process that follows through on the proclivity for grasping, and for holding on to fixed ideas and identities. What we call ego is really an ever-changing perception.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“I am part of this universe. This air is part of this universe. With each breath, the universe changes. With each exhale, the old me dies. With each inhale, a new me is born.”

Comments: Click to comment

“There is something watching and something being watched—the experience of awareness recognizing itself. When this duality is eliminated, we drop into what we call pure—or non-dual—awareness... minds that are increasingly liberated from habitual reactivity and preconceptions about how things are supposed to be.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“To mistake our habitual misperceptions for the whole of reality is what we mean by ignorance, and these delusions define the world of confusion, or samsara.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Despite appearances, no aspect of life ever stays the same. The construction of any one object—no matter how dense it appears, such as an ocean liner, our bodies, a skyscraper, or an oak tree—will reveal the appearance of solidity to be as illusory as permanence.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“if we cannot consciously allow patterns to die, then we cannot take advantage of the energizing benefits of regeneration... ... What we learn by becoming aware of dying before we die is that dying is rebirth.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“My student's mind had gotten swept up in a positive story, but in both cases, getting hooked by a story means that we have lost touch with awareness.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“We confuse the renewable deaths of our mental states with the ultimate death of our bodies... But understanding impermanence as the outer lay of death can be even more effective for cutting through our irrational mental habits... we can learn that what we dread as a future event is happening all the time.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Let it be makes it possible to see that our true nature is free from problems, distress, and suffering—and that it always has been... But this is not freedom from distress and anxiety. It is freedom that can be experience with stress and anxiety. We are liberated from suffering by correctly perceiving reality.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Until we accept the truth of impermanence, ignorance and confusion will darken our days.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“What will you do when you experience your life as being interrupted by undesired circumstances?... How do we act when wee do not get what we want, or when we do not want what we have?... will you implode through fear, anger, or loss of control?”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“What will you do in the bardo?”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Invite death. Serve tea and make friends with it. Then you won't have anything to worry about.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“regeneration through loss ... A divorce that feels like death itself can lead to a happier, healthier relationship. The nightmare of getting fired ends up being the best thing that ever happened. A debilitating illness that is initially met with alarm and refusal transforms into new dimensions of compassion.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Everything in the whole world system exists in between something else... between the death of the old me and the birth of whatever comes next. Becoming and becoming always in the bardo of the unknown, the uncertain, the transient.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Glimpses of pristine awareness can be treransfomative, but it takes work to stabilize the view. This why we say, Short moments, many times. Many, many times.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“As kids, we learned from Milarepa that happiness does not depend on circumstances. His infinite contentment in freezing weather, with no food and no clothes, turned him into a god-being; but his human story made his life approachable—even if his summit remains unattainable.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“But we get scared of change, because when we identify with a pattern of behavior, giving it up can feel like death itself... the death of the masks.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Confidence cannot mature without the acceptance of uncertainty... But if we know that there is a bigger reality in which we live, we can become less afraid of our own authenticity.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“the self-imposed punishment that anger inflicts — When we act out of anger, we punish others and ourselves. Our equanimity evaporates. Our hearts shut down. The capacity to give and receive love freezes on the spot.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“We inherently have free will yet this only arises from an examined mind... Until we learn how to examine our minds and direct our behavior, our karmic tendencies will compel habits to reseed themselves.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“By funneling our immense complexity into a reductive profile, we become tricked into thinking that we know ourselves, while missing most of what there is to know. This keeps us spinning in endless loops”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Aspects of our past are carried forth into each new moment. This is the nature of karma... Our activities today tend to conform to our ideas of who we think we were yesterday.”

from In Love with the World

Comments: Click to comment

“resistance to change puts us at odds with reality, and this creates never-ceasing dissatisfaction”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“from torment and agony to dissatisfaction, distress, agitation, and annoyance.. Every variety reflects a mental disturbance that arises when we substitute reality as-it-is for what we wish it to be.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“If we do not create a story around the wave [ emotions, desires, and aversions ], then we have empty water dissolving into empty ocean... Emotions themselves are not the problem. It's how we relate to them.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Our perceptions are false. The objects of our perceptions are neither false nor true... Is the body real? Is there such a thing as a 'real' self or a 'false' self? The term no-self does not mean 'false self' yet it's not real in ways that we imagine.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“How do we hold such obvious misperceptions in place? There is only one obstacle to knowing my own essential emptiness—the mind cloud that got stuck in the fixity of embarrassment, or in attachment to roles, and the inability or unwillingness to let these clouds pass.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“the so-called normalcy of hamster-wheel activity keeps people running away from themselves. Isolated, but too scared to be alone.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“as anyone in the hell of hatred knows, nothing binds you to the object of hatred ore than your own aversion”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“When the affliction of negative emotions is blazing like fire, then wisdom is also blazing like fire.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Can we seize the unbidden opportunity to explore this new mental territory of nondefined spaciousness that is actually always there?”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Letting go is itself is an example of dying. But recognition of this dying is what allows us to inhabit the continuous cycle of dying and being reborn with ease.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“we do not die into nothingness; we die into deathless awareness”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“see that the seeds for regeneration exist within change, with being delighted with the sand castles as they wash away... All this present moment's possibility rests with impermanence.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“I finally discovered the only reliable liberation from suffering: not trying to get rid of the problem.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“We are all the self-inflicted victims of mistaken identity... Being alive without waking up to the truth of emptiness is like joining the waking dead.”

Comments: Click to comment

“I am seeking to let go of the illusory hats that I am wearing on this illusory head and that live inside this mind that is falsified by confusion and muddled by misperception, hats that have never existed, all of them fake identities, created by a fake-identity mind, affirmed by warped perceptions, held n place by habit”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Do not push away, do not invite.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Until we transform ourselves, we are like mobs of angry people screaming for peace.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Continuously longing for what we don't have... We are restless with this scent of something better close by, but out of reach... That grass is better than this grass—all day long.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Who develops industries that fill the air and water with toxic waste? How did we humans become immune to the plight of refugees, or hardened to the suffering of animals raised to be slaughtered?”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“People everywhere try so hard to make the world better. Their intentions are admirable, yet they seek to change everything but themselves.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Without death there is no life.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“If we wake up to this reality, we can actively direct what comes next, and not just passively accept false conclusions of what feels inevitable.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Compassion that arises with empathy acknowledges that ignorance causes suffering.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“I expanded my love to include all of those on the train... for everyone in this entire world, the same for every pet, every wild animal, every insect, every rat that scurried by seeking happiness in a crumb.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“The insight that the Buddha discovered is so simple, and yet so difficult to accept. His teachings introduce us to a dormant, hidden, unrealized part of ourselves.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“This is the great paradox of the Buddhist path: that we practice in order to know what we already are, therefore attaining nothing, getting nothing, going nowhere. We seek to uncover what has always been there.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“only through dying will the past not dominate this moment”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Without the capacity to die continuously, we end up living in a place where only fungus grows... Unless you wake up, tomorrow will feel like today.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“The content of dreams is nothing other than projections of our own mind, but without the controls or manipulations that we impose during the day... the bonds that hold the conventional mind in place become unglued.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Buddha became Buddha because he recognized that everything is a dream, including himself.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Creativity means staying open to change, and risking failure... We are always taking a chance, precisely because there is no certainty.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“You build a mask and then grow into that mask... masks that hide our true selves... The process of training the mind peels off the masks... let go of rote behaviors... being defensive and uptight, lazy, irritable, or self-conscious... We can survive the death of impersonating ourselves, and of wearing masks. We will not just survive, but flourish.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“it's a trap to get attached to any particular experience, especially those that relate to spiritual awakening.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Our relative minds have never truly been more stable than a rainbow.,, these translucent arcs magically reflect impermanence, insubstantiality, and interdependence.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Living in ignorant denial of death is like eating poisoned candy. It tastes so delicious. But slowly, the poison of fear seeps into your bowels and saps the life out of you.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“dreams present the very opposite of a closed, rigid mind... We work with the direct experience that dreaming offers us to challenge our assumptions and expand our perceptions.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Without personal transformation, and without some sense of humility... greed and anger are pushing us over the cliff.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“modern urban people seem more stressed and agitated than poor rural people... They are always wanting more and more and are never satisfied.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“if we recognize the essential emptiness of phenomena then we an enjoy our desires without getting attached to the misperceptions that cause suffering.. Everything comes from emptiness. It is full of alive potential, full of possibility.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“For many people, self-pity attaches to sickness like sticky glue, and the voice of ego asks, Why me?”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“A common metaphor for the entire Buddhist path is swimming against the stream... It can be used to cut through mindless behavioral loops, and for using disruption to wake us up from our sleepwalking habits.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“By facing our fear of the future, we transform the present.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“Physical death offers the best opportunity for enlightenment; and enlightenment offers the best opportunity for helping others.”

from In Love With the World

Comments: Click to comment

“emptiness is an open-ended potential for any and all sorts of experience to appear or disappear—the way a crystal ball is capable of reflecting all sorts of colors because it is, in itself, free from any color.”

from Joyful Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“you can use the frustration and anger you feel as a focus of meditation... We tend not to remember our ability until we're thrust into sink-or-swim situations.”

from Joyful Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“deeply ingrained habits of perception and belief that are almost guaranteed to perpetuate suffering and inhibit the possibility of discovering an enduring, unconditional state of happiness... the tendency to define our experience in dualistic terms: 'self' and 'other'; 'mine' and 'not mine'; 'pleasant' and unpleasant.'”

from Joyful Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“there is no single thing that everyone can agree on,”

from Joyful Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“Wisdom, capability, loving-kindness, and compassion are what we're born with. Frustration, jealousy, guilt, shame, anxiety, greed, competitiveness are expereinces we learn”

from Joyful Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment