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In Spiritual Life There Is No Room For Compromise. Awakening Is Not Negotiable; We Cannot Bargain To Hold On To Things That Please Us While Relinquishing Things That Do Not Matter To Us. A Lukewarm Yearning For Awakening Is Not Enough To Sustain Us Through The Difficulties Involved In Letting Go. It Is Important To Understand That Anything That Can Be Lost Was Never Truly Ours, Anything That We Deeply Cling To Only Imprisons Us.

-Jack Kornfield

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In Spiritual Life There

Jack Kornfield

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In Spiritual Life There Is No Room For Compromise. Awakening Is Not Negotiable; We Cannot Bargain To Hold On To Things That Please Us While Relinquishing Things That Do Not Matter To Us. A Lukewarm Yearning For Awakening Is Not Enough To Sustain Us Through The Difficulties Involved In Letting Go. It Is Important To Understand That Anything That Can Be Lost Was Never Truly Ours, Anything That We Deeply Cling To Only Imprisons Us.

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Each Moment Of Every Day Is New And Then It Vanishes. Where Is That Day? Where Is That Moment?

When Repeated Difficulties Do Arise, Our First Spiritual Approach Is To Acknowledge What Is Present, Naming, Softly Saying 'sadness, Sadness', Or 'remembering, Remembering', Or Whatever.

As We Step Out Of The Way New Things Are Born.

To Bow To The Fact Of Our Life's Sorrows And Betrayals Is To Accept Them; And From This Deep Gesture We Discover That All Life Is Workable. As We Learn To Bow, We Discover That The Heart Holds More Freedom And Compassion Than We Could Imagine.

As Surely As There Is A Voyage Away, There Is A Journey Home.

It's Much Better To Become A Buddha Than A Buddhist.

Life Without Forgiveness Is Unbearable.

Our Ideas Of Self Are Created By Identification. The Less We Cling To Ideas Of Self, The Freer And Happier We Will Be.

Only In The Reality Of The Present Can We Love, Can We Awaken, Can We Find Peace And Understanding And Connection With Ourselves And The World.

Know That The Freedom You Seek Can Be Found Right Here Where You Are.

There Are Many Good Forms Of Meditation Practice. A Good Meditation Practice Is Any One That Develops Awareness Or Mindfulness Of Our Body And Our Sense, Of Our Mind And Heart.

Meditation Practice

Buddhist Teachings Are Not A Religion, They Are A Science Of Mind.

We Must Look At Ourselves Over And Over Again In Order To Learn To Love, To Discover What Has Kept Our Hearts Closed, And What It Means To Allow Our Hearts To Open.

When We Take The One Seat On Our Meditation Cushion We Become Our Own Monastery. We Create The Compassionate Space That Allows For The Arising Of All Things: Sorrows, Loneliness, Shame, Desire, Regret, Frustration, Happiness.

Embodied Courage Chooses Not To Wait Until Illness Or Notice Of Death Demands Attention.

Love Creates A Communion With Life. Love Expands Us, Connects Us, Sweetens Us, Ennobles Us. Love Springs Up In Tender Concern, It Blossoms Into Caring Action. It Makes Beauty Out Of All We Touch. In Any Moment We Can Step Beyond Our Small Self And Embrace Each Other As Beloved Parts Of A Whole.

If You Can Sit Quietly After Difficult News; If In Financial Downturns You Remain Perfectly Calm; If You Can See Your Neighbors Travel To Fantastic Places Without A Twinge Of Jealousy; If You Can Happily Eat Whatever Is Put On Your Plate; You Can Fall Asleep After A Day Of Running Around Without A Drink Or A Pill; If You Can Always Find Contentment Just Where You Are: You Are Probably A Dog.

Life Is So Hard, How Can We Be Anything But Kind?

When I Sit With Students, I Do Not Just Want To Help Them Solve Their Problems. I Want To Find A Moment With Each Person Where Their Mind Stops And Their Eyes Open. I Want Us To Be Together As If We Were Lying In A Field On The Underside Of The Earth On A Clear Summer Night, Held Only By The Magnet Of Gravity, Looking Down Into A Bottomless Sea Of Stars. I Want Us To Remember Together The Beauty All Around Us.

Within Each Of Us There Is A Silence As Vast As The Universe. We Long For It. We Can Return To It.

Much Of Spiritual Life Is Self-acceptance, Maybe All Of It.

A Second Quality Of Mature Sirituality Is Kindness. It Is Based On A Fundamental Notion Of Self-acceptance.

You Have To Accept The Way Things Are Before You Can Move On.

Nirvana Manifests As Ease, As Love, As Connectedness, As Generosity, As Clarity, As Unshakable Freedom. This Isn’t Watering Down Nirvana. This Is The Reality Of Liberation That We Can Experience, Sometimes In A Moment And Sometimes In Transformative Ways That Change Our Entire Life

We Can Struggle With What Is. We Can Judge And Blame Others Or Ourselves. Or We Can Accept What Cannot Be Changed. Peace Comes From An Honorable And Open Heart Accepting What Is True. Do We Want To Remain Stuck? Or To Release The Fearful Sense Of Self And Rest Kindly Where We Are?

The Ends Do Not Justify The Means. If Our Actions Will Bring Harm To Others, Even In The Service Of Some 'good,' They Are Almost Certainly Deluded. If Our Actions Do Not Come From A Kind Heart, From Loving Courage And Compassion, They Are Deluded. If They Are Based On A Distinction Between 'us' And 'them,' They Stem From Delusion. Only To The Extent That We Act From The Wisdom Of No Separation, Understanding How We Are Woven Together, Will Our Intention Bring Benefit.

In The West, There's A Myth That Freedom Means Free Expression-that To Follow All Desires Wherever They Take One Is True Freedom. In Fact, As One Serves The Mind, One Sees That Following Desires, Attractions, And Repulsions Is Not At All Freedom, But Is A Kind Of Bondage. A Mind Filled With Desires And Grasping Inevitably Entails Great Suffering. Freedom Is Not To Be Gained Through The Ability To Perform Certain External Actions. True Freedom Is An Inward State Of Being. Once It Is Attained, No Situation In The World Can Bind One Or Limit One's Freedom.

Even Socrates, Who Lived A Very Frugal And Simple Life, Loved To Go To The Market. When His Students Asked About This, He Replied, "i Love To Go And See All The Things I Am Happy Without.

There Is Beauty To Be Found In The Changing Of The Earth’s Seasons, And An Inner Grace In Honouring The Cycles Of Life.

The Independence And Rebelliousness Of Our Adolescence Offer Us Yet Another Quality Essential To Our Practice; The Insistence That We Find Out The Truth For Ourselves, Accepting No One's Word Above Our Own Experience.

For Most Of Us, Generosity Is A Quality That Must Be Developed. We Have To Respect That It Will Grow Gradually; Otherwise Our Spirituality Can Become Idealistic And Imitative, Acting Out The Image Of Generosity Before It Has Become Genuine.

When We Struggle To Change Ourselves We, In Fact, Only Continue The Patterns Of Self-judgement And Aggression. We Keep The War Against Ourselves Alive.

Let Go Of The Battle. Breathe Quietly And Let It Be. Let Your Body Relax And Your Heart Soften. Open To Whatever You Experience Without Fighting.

Whenever We Forgive, In Small Ways At Home, Or In Great Ways Between Nations, We Free Ourselves From The Past.

What Would We Have To Hold In Compassion To Be At Peace Right Now? What Would We Have To Let Go Of To Be At Peace Right Now?

Do Not Doubt Your Own Basic Goodness. In Spite Of All Confusion And Fear, You Are Born With A Heart That Knows What Is Just, Loving, And Beautiful.

We Each Need To Make Our Lion's Roar - To Persevere With Unshakable Courage When Faced With All Manner Of Doubts And Sorrows And Fears - To Declare Our Right To Awaken.

In Sitting On The Meditation Cushion And Assuming The Meditation Posture, We Connect Ourselves With The Present Moment In This Body And On This Earth.

Everything Has A Beginning And An Ending. Make Peace With That And All Will Be Well...in Life We Cannot Avoid Change, We Cannot Avoid Loss. Freedom And Happiness Are Found In The Flexibility And Ease With Which We Move Through Change.

Freedom And Happiness

Built On The Foundation Of Concentration Is The Third Aspect Of The Buddha’s Path Of Awakening: Clarity Of Vision And The Development Of Wisdom.

Whatever You Believe Cosmologically, We All Know The Tears Of The World. We Each Carry A Certain Measure Of Those Tears In Our Hearts.

In The End, Just Three Things Matter: How Well We Have Lived How Well We Have Loved How Well We Have Learned To Let Go

When Our Identity Expands To Include Everything, We Find A Peace With The Dance Of The World. The Ocean Of Life Rises And Falls Within Us - Birth And Death, Joy And Pain, It Is All Ours, And Our Heart Is Full And Empty, Large Enough To Embrace It All.

It Is The Basic Principle Of Spiritual Life That We Learn The Deepest Things In Unknown Territory. Often It Is When We Feel Most Confused Inwardly And Are In The Midst Of Our Greatest Difficulties That Something New Will Open. We Awaken Most Easily To The Mystery Of Life Through Our Weakest Side. The Areas Of Our Greatest Strength, Where We Are The Most Competent And Clearest, Tend To Keep Us Away From The Mystery.

The Light Around Someone Who Speaks Truth, Who Consistently Acts With Compassion For All, Even In Great Difficulty, Is Visible To All Around Them.

How Did We Get Into This Funny-looking Body That Has A Hole At One End In Which We Regularly Stuff Dead Plants And Animals? It's Bizarre That We Got Here, Incarnated Into This World With These Bodies.

Live In Joy, Luminosity, And Peace Even Among The Troubles Of The World. Remember Who You Are.

Remember Who You Are

In Opening We Can See How Many Times We Have Mistaken Small Identities And Fearful Beliefs For Our True Nature And How Limiting This Is. We Can Touch With Great Compassion The Pain From The Contracted Identities That We And Others Have Created In The World.

The Focusing Of Attention On The Breath Is Perhaps The Most Universal Of The Many Hundreds Of Meditation Subjects Used Worldwide.

No Matter What Situation We Find Ourselves In, We Can Always Set Our Compass To Our Highest Intentions In The Present Moment

Refraining From Stealing: Care With Material Goods. Undertake For One Week To Act On Every Single Thought Of Generosity That Arises Spontaneously In Your Heart.

A Factor That Greatly Supports The Opening Of Energy In Practice Is Exercise And Care Of The Physical Body.

Without Being Aware Of It, You Take Many Things As Being Your Identity: Your Body, Your Race, Your Beliefs, Your Thoughts.

We Do Not Have To Improve Ourselves; We Just Have To Let Go Of What Blocks Our Heart.

Within The Mystery Of Life There Is The Infinite Darkness Of The Night Sky Lit By Distant Orbs Of Fire, The Cobbled Skin Of An Orange That Releases Its Fragrance To Our Touch, The Unfathomable Depths Of The Eyes Of Our Lover. No Creation Story, No Religious System Can Fully Describe Or Explain This Richness And Depth. Mystery Is So Every-present That No One Can Know For Certain What Will Happen One Hour From Now. “ It Does Not Matter Whether You Have Religion Or Are An Agnostic Believe In Nothing, You Can Only Appreciate (without Knowing Or Understanding) The Mysteries Of Life.

Grant That I Have Enough Suffering That My Heart Really Opens To The Great Compassion Of This World, That I Be Given Enough So That I Don't Wall Myself Off From The World, That It Breaks Down The Heart And The Separation And The Ego And The Fear, And It Lets Me Touch The Nectar, The Milk Of Kindness Itself, Of Something Greater.

To Let Go Does Not Mean To Get Rid Of. To Let Go Means To Let Be. When We Let Be With Compassion, Things Come And Go On Their Own.

May I Be Given The Appropriate Difficulties So That My Heart Can Truly Open With Compassion. Imagine Asking For That.

Train Your Mind The Same Way You’d Train A Puppy: Be Patient, Be Consistent, And Have Some Fun Along The Way.

Acceptance Does Not Mean Inaction. We May Need To Respond, Strongly At Times...from A Peaceful Center We Can Respond Instead Of React. Unconscious Reactions Create Problems. Considered Responses Bring Peace. With A Peaceful Heart Whatever Happens Can Be Met With Wisdom...peace Is Not Weak; It Is Unshakable.

Strength Of The Heart Comes From Knowing That The Pain That We Each Must Bear Is Part Of The Greater Pain Shared By All That Lives. It Is Not Just 'our' Pain, But 'the' Pain And Realizing This Awakens Our Universal Compassion

The Unawakened Mind Tends To Make War Against The Way Things Are. To Follow A Path With Heart, We Must Understand The Whole Process Of Making War Within Ourselves And Without, How It Begins And How It Ends. War’s Roots Are In Ignorance. Without Understanding We Can Easily Become Frightened By Life’s Fleeting Changes, The Inevitable Losses, Disappointments, The Insecurity Of Our Aging And Death. Misunderstanding Leads Us To Fight Against Life, Running From Pain Or Grasping At Security And Pleasures That By Their Nature Can Never Be Satisfying.

How Well We Have Learned To Let Go

Religion And Philosophy Have Their Value, But In The End All We Can Do Is Open To Mystery And Live A Path With Heart

In Any Moment We Can Learn To Let Go Of Hatred And Fear. We Can Rest In Peace, Love, And Forgiveness. It Is Never Too Late. Yet To Sustain Love We Need To Develop Practices That Cultivate And Strengthen The Natural Compassion Within Us.

Anger Shows Us Precisely Where We Are Stuck, Where Our Limits Are, Where We Cling To Beliefs And Fears.

May You Know The Beauty Of Your Own True Nature.

Skill In Concentrating And Steadying The Mind Is The Basis For All Types Of Meditation.

There Are No Holy Places And No Holy People, Only Holy Moments, Only Moments Of Wisdom.

Compassion For Ourselves Gives Rise To The Power To Transform Resentment Into Forgiveness, Hatred Into Friendliness, And Fear Into Respect For All Beings.

Virtue And Integrity Are Necessary For Genuine Happiness. Guard Your Integrity With Care.

What We Seek Is What We Are.

The Trouble Is That You Think You Have Time.

Procrastination

We Each Have Been Betrayed. Let Yourself Picture And Remember The Many Ways This Is True. Feel The Sorrow You Have Carried From This Past. Now Sense That You Can Release This Burden Of Pain By Gradually Extending Forgiveness As Your Heart Is Ready.

We Need Courage And Strength, A Kind Of Warrior Spirit. But The Place For This Warrior Strength Is In The Heart. We Need Energy, Commitment, And Courage Not To Run From Our Life Nor To Cover It Over With Any Philosophy-mate Rial Or Spiritual. We Need A Warrior’s Heart That Lets Us Face Our Lives Directly, Our Pains And Limitations, Our Joys And Possibilities.

We Must Especially Learn The Art Of Directing Mindfulness Into The Closed Areas Of Our Life.

No Matter How Difficult The Past, You Can Always Begin Again Today.

In This World There Are Two Great Sources Of Strength. One Rests With Those Who Are Not Afraid To Kill. The Other Rests With Those Who Are Not Afraid To Love.

The Grief We Carry Is Part Of The Grief Of The World. Hold It Gently. Let It Be Honored. You Do Not Have To Keep It In Anymore. You Can Let Go Into The Heart Of Compassion; You Can Weep.

To Let Go In The Deepest Recesses Of The Heart, To Release All Struggle And Wanting, Leads Us To That Knowing Which Is Timeless.

Samadhi Doesn’t Just Come Of Itself; It Takes Practice.

There Are Many Ways Up The Mountain And Each Of Us Must Choose A Practice That Feels True To Our Heart.

We Have Only Now, Only This Single Eternal Moment Opening And Unfolding Before Us, Day And Night.

We Can Bring Our Spiritual Practice Into The Streets, Into Our Communities, When We See Each Realm As A Temple, As A Place To Discover That Which Is Sacred.

In This There Is No Judgment And No Blame, For We Seek Not To Perfect The World But To Perfect Our Love For What Is On This Earth.

Knowledge And Achievements Matter Little If We Do Not Yet Know How To Touch The Heart Of Another And Be Touched.

Even Time Is A Concept. In Reality We Are Always In The Eternal Present. The Past Is Just A Memory, The Future Just An Image Or Thought. All Our Stories About Past And Future Are Only Ideas, Arising In The Moment. Our Modern Culture Is So Tyrannized By Goals, Plans, And Improvement Schemes That We Constantly Live For The Future. But As Aldous Huxley Reminded Us In His Writings, "an Idolatrous Religion Is One In Which Time Is Substituted For Eternity...the Idea Of Endless Progress Is The Devil's Work, Even Today Demanding Human Sacrifice On An Enormous Scale.

Once We See That Everything Is Impermanent And Ungraspable And That We Create A Huge Amount Of Suffering If We Are Attached To Things Staying The Same, We Realize That Relaxing And Letting Go Is A Wiser Way To Live. Letting Go Does Not Mean Not Caring About Things. It Means Caring About Them In A Flexible And Wise Way.

Yes, There Are Troubles In The World. There's War And Hatred, There's Sickness And Difficulty. And There Is Also An Undying Spirit, An Inviolable Consciousness That Is Born In Each Of Us. It Is Who We Are, And It's Everything And It's Nothing.

When We Let Go Of Our Battles And Open Our Heart To Things As They Are, Then We Come To Rest In The Present Moment. This Is The Beginning And The End Of Spiritual Practice. Only In This Moment Can We Discover That Which Is Timeless. Only Here Can We Find The Love That We Seek. Love In The Past Is Simply Memory, And Love In The Future Is Fantasy. Only In The Reality Of The Present Can We Love, Can We Awaken, Can We Find Peace And Understanding And Connection With Ourselves And The World.

Love Is Based On Our Capacity To Trust In A Reality Beyond Fear, To Trust A Timeless Truth Bigger Than All Our Difficulties.

Loving Yourself

It Is Not Enough To Know That Love And Forgiveness Are Possible. We Have To Find Ways To Bring Them To Life.

Love And Forgiveness

A Bulging Portfolio Of Spiritual Experiences Matters Little If It Does Not Have The Power To Sustain Us Through The Inevitable Moments Of Grief, Loss, And Change. Knowledge And Achievements Matter Little If We Do Not Yet Know How To Touch The Heart Of Another And Be Touched. Wisdom Is Alive Only As Long As It Is Lived, Understanding Is Liberating Only As Long As It Is Applied.

The Path Of Awakening Begins With A Step The Buddha Called Right Understanding.

The Unawakened Mind Tends To Make War Against The Way Things Are.

The Best Of Modern Therapy Is Much Like A Process Of Shared Meditation, Where Therapist And Client Sit Together, Learning To Pay Close Attention To Those Aspects And Dimensions Of The Self That The Client May Be Unable To Touch On His Or Her Own.

There Is No Higher Happiness Than Peace.

Letting Go Does Not Mean Not Caring About Things. It Means Caring About Them In A Flexible And Wise Way.

We Have So Many Ideas And Beliefs About Ourselves. We Told Ourselves Story About What We Want And Who We Are, Smart Or Kind. Often These Are The Unexamined And Limited Ideas Of Others That We Have Internalized And Then Gone On To Life Out.

Your Happiness And Suffering Depend On Your Actions And Not On My Wishes For You.

In The End, Forgiveness Simply Means Never Putting Another Person Out Of Our Heart.

Indifference Is A Misguided Way Of Defending Ourselves.

The Only Way To Live Is By Accepting Each Minute As An Unrepeatable Miracle.

To Begin To Meditate Is To Look Into Our Lives With Interest In Kindness And Discover How To Be Wakeful And Free.

...spiritual Opening Is Not A Withdrawal To Some Imagined Realm Or Safe Cave. It Is Not A Pulling Away, But A Touching Of All The Experience Of Life With Wisdom And With A Heart Of Kindness, Without Any Separation.

Look At Every Path Closely And Deliberately. Try It As Many Times As You Think Necessary. Then Ask Yourself And Yourself Alone One Question. This Question Is One That Only A Very Old Man Asks. My Benefactor Told Me About It Once When I Was Young. And My Blood Was Too Vigorous For Me To Understand It. Now I Do Understand It. I Will Tell You What It Is: Does This Path Have A Heart? If It Does, The Path Is Good. If It Doesn't, It Is Of No Use.

To Live In This Precious Animal Body On This Earth Is As Great A Part Of Spiritual Life As Anything Else.

One Of The Essential Tasks For Living A Wise Life Is Letting Go. Letting Go Is The Path To Freedom. It Is Only By Letting Go Of The Hopes, The Fears, The Pain, The Past, The Stories That Have A Hold On Us That We Can Quiet Our Mind And Open Our Heart.

To Live Fully Is To Let Go And Die With Each Passing Moment, And To Be Reborn In Each New One.

Passing Moments

This Life Is A Test-it Is Only A Test. If It Had Been An Actual Life, You Would Have Received Further Instructions On Where To Go And What To Do. Remember, This Life Is Only A Test.

There Is A Web Of Life Into Which We Are Born, From Which We Can Never Fall.

Everything That Has A Beginning Has An Ending. Make Your Peace With That And All Will Be Well.

As We Encounter New Experiences With A Mindful And Wise Attention, We Discover That One Of Three Things Will Happen To Our New Experience: It Will Go Away, It Will Stay The Same, Or It Will Get More Intense. Whatever Happens Does Not Really Matter.

New Experiences

Most People Discover That When Hate Is Gone, They Will Be Forced To Deal With Their Own Pain.

One Day Mara, The Buddhist God Of Ignorance And Evil, Was Traveling Through The Villages Of India With His Attendants. He Saw A Man Doing Walking Meditation Whose Face Was Lit Up In Wonder. The Man Had Just Discovered Something On The Ground In Front Of Him. Mara's Attendants Asked What That Was And Mara Replied, "a Piece Of Truth." "doesn't This Bother You When Someone Finds A Piece Of The Truth, O Evil One?" His Attendants Asked. "no," Mara Replied. "right After This They Usually Make A Belief Out Of It."

The Sufis Have A Saying: "praise Allah, And Tie Your Camel To A Post." This Brings Together Both Parts Of Practice: Pray, Yes, But Also Make Sure That You Do What Is Necessary In The World.

Be Mindful Of Intention. Intention Is The Seed That Creates Our Future.

The Present Moment Is Really All That We Have. The Only Place You Can Really Love Another Person Is In The Present. Love In The Past Is A Memory. Love In The Future Is A Fantasy. To Be Really Alive, Love - Or Any Other Experience - Must Take Place In The Present.

Gratitude Is The Confidence In Life Itself... As Gratitude Grows It Gives Rise To Joy. We Experience The Courage To Rejoice In Our Own Good Fortune And In The Good Fortune Of Others... We Can Be Joyful For People We Love, For Moments Of Goodness, For Sunlight And Trees, And For The Very Breath Within Our Lungs. Like An Innocent Child, We Can Rejoice In Life Itself, In Being Alive.

To See The Preciousness Of All Things, We Must Bring Our Full Attention To Life

I Used To Think That To Become Free You Had To Practice Like A Samurai Warrior, But Now I Understand That You Have To Practice Like A Devoted Mother Of A Newborn Child. It Takes The Same Energy But Has A Completely Different Quality. It's Compassion And Presence Rather Than Having To Defeat The Enemy In Battle.

Attention To The Human Body Brings Healing And Regeneration. Through Awareness Of The Body We Remember Who We Really Are.

The Task Is Not To Perfect Yourself, It's To Perfect Your Love.

We Can Easily Become Loyal To Our Suffering … But It's Not The End Of The Path.

In Buddhist Practice, The Outward And Inward Aspects Of Taking The One Seat Meet On Our Meditation Cushion.

When We Let Go Of Yearning For The Future, Preoccupation With The Past, And Strategies To Protect The Present, There Is Nowhere Left To Go But Where We Are. To Connect With The Present Moment Is To Begin To Appreciate The Beauty Of True Simplicity.

To Undertake A Genuine Spiritual Path Is Not To Avoid Difficulties But To Learn The Art Of Making Mistakes Wakefully, To Bring Them To The Transformative Power Of Our Heart.

As We Willingly Enter Each Place Of Fear, Each Place Of Deficiency And Insecurity In Ourselves, We Will Discover That Its Walls Are Made Of Untruths, Of Old Images Of Ourselves, Of Ancient Fears, Of False Ideas Of What Is Pure And What Is Not.

The Work Of Your Heart, The Work Of Taking Time, To Listen, To Help, Is Also Your Gift To The Whole Of The World

With Mindfulness, We Are Learning To Observe In A New Way, With Balance And A Powerful Disidentification.

Finding A Way To Extend Forgiveness To Ourselves Is One Of Our Most Essential Tasks. Just As Others Have Been Caught In Suffering, So Have We. If We Look Honestly At Our Life, We Can See The Sorrows And Pain That Have Led To Our Own Wrongdoing. In This We Can Finally Extend Forgiveness To Ourselves; We Can Hold The Pain We Have Caused In Compassion. Without Such Mercy, We Will Live Our Own Life In Exile.

As Desire Abates, Generosity Is Born. When We Are Connected And Present, What Else Is There To Do But Give?

The Emotional Wisdom Of The Heart Is Simple. When We Accept Our Human Feelings, A Remarkable Transformation Occurs. Tenderness And Wisdom Arise Naturally And Spontaneously. Where We Once Sought Strength Over Others, Now Our Strength Becomes Our Own; Where We Once Sought To Defend Ourselves, We Laugh.

Equanimity Arises When We Accept The Way Things Are.

Spiritual Life Doesn't Make You A Good Person; You Are A Good Person, You Are A Holy Being When You Are Born. What Spiritual Life Does Is Remind Us That This Is Who We Really Are.

Wherever You Are Is The Perfect Place To Awaken. This Moment Is The Exact Place To Practice Compassion And Loving Awareness. You Have All The Ingredients To Breathe And Find Freedom Just Where You Are.

Beneath The Sophistication Of Buddhist Psychology Lies The Simplicity Of Compassion. We Can Touch Into This Compassion Whenever The Mind Is Quiet, Whenever We Allow The Heart To Open.

Peace Requires Us To Surrender Our Illusions Of Control.

Illusion Of Control

You Are The Mystery Incarnating Itself, And It's Beautiful When You Remember. It's Also Painful And Awesome And It Contains Unbearable Beauty And Unfathomable Pain - The Ocean Of Tears And Galaxy Of Bliss. I Don't Say That Lightly, But It's What We Have.

No Amount Of Outer Technology, No Amount Of Computers And Biotechnology And Nanotechnology Is Going To Stop The Continuation Of Warfare And Racism And Environmental Destruction. What's Called For On The Earth At This Time Is Really A Change Of Heart ... The Question Is Really Not The Future Of Humanity, But The Presence Of Eternity.

Though Outer Events May Be Difficult, The Key To Our Happiness Is How Our Mind Responds To Them.

When We Have For So Long Been Judged By Everyone We Meet, Just To Look Into The Eyes Of Another Who Does Not Judge Us Can Be Extraordinarily Healing.

Thich Nhat Hanh Has The Ability To Express Some Of The Most Profound Teachings Of Interdependence And Emptiness I've Ever Heard. With The Eloquence Of A Poet, He Holds Up A Sheet Of Paper And Teaches Us That The Rain Cloud And The Tree And The Logger Who Cut The Tree Down Are All There In The Paper. He's Been One Of The Most Significant Carriers Of The Lamp Of The Dharma To The West That We Have Had.

To Open Deeply, As Genuine Spiritual Life Requires, We Need Tremendous Courage And Strength, A Kind Of Warrior Spirit.

Whatever We Cultivate In Times Of Ease, We Gather As Strength For Times Of Change.

Buddhists Were Actually The First Cognitive-behavioral Therapists.

It Does Not Matter Whether You Have Religion Or Are An Agnostic Believe In Nothing, You Can Only Appreciate (without Knowing Or Understanding) The Mysteries Of Life.

Without Integrity And Conscience We Lose Our Freedom.

When The Stories Of Our Life No Longer Bind Us, We Discover Within Them Something Greater. We Discover That Within The Very Limitations Of Form, Of Our Maleness And Femaleness, Of Our Parenthood And Our Childhood, Of Gravity On The Earth And The Changing Of The Seasons, Is The Freedom And Harmony We Have Sought For So Long. Our Individual Life Is An Expression Of The Whole Mystery, And In It We Can Rest In The Center Of The Movement, The Center Of All Worlds.

Whatever Your Difficulties - A Devastated Heart, Financial Loss, Feeling Assaulted By The Conflicts Around You, Or A Seemingly Hopeless Illness - You Can Always Remember That You Are Free In Every Moment To Set The Compass Of Your Heart To Your Highest Intentions. In Fact, The Two Things That You Are Always Free To Do - Despite Your Circumstances - Are To Be Present And To Be Willing To Love.

Those Who Are Awake Live In A State Of Constant Amazement.

We As Human Beings Have The Amazing Capacity To Be Reborn At Breakfast Everyday And Say, “this Is A New Day.”

The Basic Principle Of Spiritual Life Is That Our Problems Become The Very Place To Discover Wisdom And Love.

It Is True That The Heart Has Its Seasons, Just As A Flower Opens To The Sunlight And Closes To The Night. We Need To Be Respectful Of Those Rhythms. But We Can't Close Down For Long. It Is Our True Nature To Have An Open Heart.

When Attachment Arises In The Place Of Love, It Sees The Other As Separate; It Grasps And Needs. Attachment Is Conditional; It Seeks Control And It Fear Loss. Ask Your Heart If Attachment Has Replaced Love. If We Speak To Our Heart, It Will Always Tell Us The Truth.

Meet This Transient World With Neither Grasping Nor Fear, Trust The Unfolding Of Life, And You Will Attain True Serenity.

The Purpose Of A Spiritual Discipline Is To Give Us A Way To Stop The War, Not By Our Force Of Will, But Organically, Through Understanding An Gradual Training.

The Way I Treat My Body Is Not Disconnected From The Way I Treat My Family Or The Commitment I Have To Peace On Our Earth.

What Is Truly A Part Of Our Spiritual Path Is That Which Brings Us Alive. If Gardening Brings Us Alive, That Is Part Of Our Path, If It Is Music, If It Is Conversation...we Must Follow What Brings Us Alive.

In Deep Self Acceptance, Grows A Compassionate Understanding.

Great Spiritual Traditions Are Used As A Means To Ripen Us, To Bring Us Face To Face With Our Life, And To Help Us To See In A New Way By Developing A Stillness Of Mind And A Strength Of Heart.

The Questions Asked At The End Of Lie Are Very Simple Ones: Did I Love Well? Did I Love The People Around Me, My Community, The Earth, In A Deep Way? And Perhaps, Did I Live Fully? Did I Offer Myself To Life?

Of Course, You Play The Game Of Life Because You Got To Be Incarnated.

We Need A Warrior’s Heart That Lets Us Face Our Lives Directly, Our Pains And Limitations, Our Joys And Possibilities.

Gratitude Is Confidence In Life Itself. In It, We Feel How The Same Force That Pushes Grass Through Cracks In The Sidewalk Invigorates Our Own Life.

To Meditate Is To Discover New Possibilities, To Awaken The Capacities Of Us Has To Live More Wisely, More Lovingly, More Compassionately, And More Fully.

New Possibilities

Nobody Knows Why They Were Born Or Where They Come From.

The Waves Do Keep Coming, So Learn To Surf.

Forgiveness Does Not Mean That We Have To Continue To Relate To Those Who Have Done Us Harm. In Some Cases The Best Practice May Be To End Our Connection, To Never Speak To Or Be With A Harmful Person Again. Sometimes In The Process Of Forgiveness A Person Who Hurts Or Betrayed Us May Wish To Make Amends, But Even This Does Not Require Us To Put Ourselves In The Way Of Further Harm.

All Of Spiritual Practice Is A Matter Of Relationship: To Ourselves, To Others, To Life's Situations.

When We Get Too Caught Up In The Busyness Of The World, We Lose Connection With One Another - And Ourselves.

To Learn To Concentrate We Must Choose A Prayer Or Meditation And Follow This Path With Commitment And Steadiness, A Willingness To Work With Our Practice Day After Day, No Matter What Arises.

Some Other People Think That Awakened Consciousness Is Really About Fullness Or Presence, Being Completely Present For Every Moment, But These Experiences Are Only One Of The Dimensions Of Awakened Consciousness. Understanding These Different Dimensions As Facets Of Awakening Can Help With The Confusion Surrounding The Different Spiritual Paths. They're Not Leading To Different Places, But Rather Reflect The Luminous And Liberated Aspects Of Consciousness Itself. These Qualities Are Not Far Away; In Fact, They Are Right Here.

There Are Several Different Kinds Of Painful Feelings That We Might Experience, And Learning To Distinguish And Relate To These Feelings Of Discomfort Or Pain Is An Important Part Of Meditation Practice, Because It Is One Of The Very First Things That We Open To As Our Practice Develops.

Meditation Practice

It Is Hard To Imagine A World Without Forgiveness. Without Forgiveness Life Would Be Unbearable. Without Forgiveness Our Lives Are Chained, Forced To Carry The Sufferings Of The Past And Repeat Them With No Release.

We Must Look At Our Life Without Sentimentality, Exaggeration Or Idealism. Does What We Are Choosing Reflect What We Most Deeply Value?

We Don't Know All The Reasons That Propel Us On A Spiritual Journey, But Somehow Our Life Compels Us To Go.

Weigh The True Advantages Of Forgiveness And Resentment To The Heart. Then Choose.

The Aim Of Spiritual Life Is To Awaken A Joyful Freedom, A Benevolent And Compassionate Heart In Spite Of Everything.

In A Society That Almost Demands Life At Double Time, Speed And Addictions Numb Us To Our Own Experience. In Such A Society, It Is Almost Impossible To Settle Into Our Bodies Or Stay Connected With Our Hearts, Let Alone Connect With One Another Or The Earth Where We Live.

Even The Most Exalted States And The Most Exceptional Spiritual Accomplishments Are Unimportant If We Cannot Be Happy In The Most Basic And Ordinary Ways, If We Cannot Touch One Another And The Life We Have Been Given With Our Hearts.

It Is The Place Of Feeling That Binds Us Or Frees Us.

You Hold In Your Hand An Invitation: To Remember The Transforming Power Of Forgiveness And Loving Kindness. To Remember That No Matter Where You Are And What You Face, Within Your Heart Peace Is Possible.

Only A Deep Attention To The Whole Of Our Life Can Bring Us The Capacity To Love Well And Live Freely.

Capacity To Love

Wisdom Says We Are Nothing. Love Says We Are Everything. Between These Two Our Life Flows.

In Our Charade With Ourselves We Pretend That Our War Is Not Really War. We Have Changed The Name Of The War Department To The Defense Department And Call A Whole Class Of Nuclear Missiles Peace Keepers!

To Understand Ourselves And Our Life Is The Point Of Insight Meditation: To Understand And To Be Free.

When We Come Into The Present, We Begin To Feel The Life Around Us Again, But We Also Encounter Whatever We Have Been Avoiding. We Must Have The Courage To Face Whatever Is Present - Our Pain, Our Desires, Our Grief, Our Loss, Our Secret Hopes Our Love - Everything That Moves Us Most Deeply.

The Knowledge Of The Past Stays With Us. To Let Go Is To Release The Images And Emotions, The Grudges And Fears, The Clingings And Disappointments Of The Past That Bind Our Spirit.

No One Knows How This World Came Into Being. It Is A Creation Of Consciousness Itself. It's Extraordinary, A Mystery.

Forgiveness Is Primarily For Our Own Sake, So That We No Longer Carry The Burden Of Resentment. But To Forgive Does Not Mean We Will Allow Injustice Again.

At The End Of Our Life Our Questions Are Simple: Did I Live Fully? Did I Love Well?

Every Individual Has A Unique Contribution.

Taking The One Seat Describes Two Related Aspects Of Spiritual Work. Outwardly, It Means Selecting One Practice And Teacher Among All The Possibilities, And Inwardly, It Means Having The Determination To Stick With That Practice Through Whatever Difficulties And Doubts Arise Until You Have Come To True Clarity And Understanding.

We Are Awakened To The Profound Realization That The True Path To Liberation Is To Let Go Of Everything.

We Can Step Out Of Our Small Sense Of Self And Awaken To This Reality. One Of The Reasons People Get Confused About Freedom, Enlightenment, And Liberation Is Because This Awakened Consciousness Has Different Facets Or Different Dimensions, A Bit Like A Crystal. If You Hold This Luminous Crystal Up To The Light And Turn It, It Will Take A Beam Of White Light And Refract It Into The Many Colors Of The Spectrum.

You Awaken Your True Spirit By Way Of The Broken Heart: Ragged, Vulnerable, Fierce And Finally Compassionate. Chris Trod This Rough Way And Shows Honestly How It Can Be Done.

Expressing Gratitude To Our Benefactors Is A Natural Form Of Love. In Fact, Some People Find Loving Kindness For Themselves So Hard, They Begin Their Practice With A Benefactor. This Too Is Fine. The Rule In Loving Kindness Practice Is To Follow The Way That Most Easily Opens Your Heart.

Compassion Is Our Deepest Nature. It Arises From Our Interconnection With All Things.

Interconnection

True Love Is Not For The Faint-hearted.

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