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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."

-Jack Kornfield

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One Day Mara, The

Jack Kornfield

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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."

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

The First Level Of Practice Is Illuminated By The Qualities Of Courage And Renunciation.

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

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.

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.

Since Death Will Take Us Anyway, Why Live Our Life In Fear? Why Not Die In Our Old Ways And Be Free To Live?

Part Of Spiritual And Emotional Maturity Is Recognizing That It's Not Like You're Going To Try To Fix Yourself And Become A Different Person. You Remain The Same Person, But You Become Awakened.

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.

It Takes Courage To Grieve, To Honor The Pain We Carry. We Can Grieve In Tears Or In Meditative Silence, In Prayer Or In Song. In Touching The Pain Of Recent And Long-held Griefs, We Come Face To Face With Our Genuine Human Vulnerability, With Helplessness And Hopelessness. These Are The Storm Clouds Of The Heart.

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Possible To Speak With Our Heart Directly. Most Ancient Cultures Know This. We Can Actually Converse With Our Heart As If It Were A Good Friend. In Modern Life We Have Become So Busy With Our Daily Affairs And Thoughts That We Have Lost This Essential Art Of Taking Time To Converse With Our Heart.

We Need Energy, Commitment, And Courage Not To Run From Our Life Nor To Cover It Over With Any Philosophy—material Or Spiritual.

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.

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

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.

May You Know The Beauty Of Your Own True Nature.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Buddhists Were Actually The First Cognitive-behavioral Therapists.

Peace Requires Us To Surrender Our Illusions Of Control.

Illusion Of Control

Ours Is A Society Of Denial That Conditions Us To Protect Ourselves From Any Direct Difficulty And Discomfort. We Expend Enormous Energy Denying Our Insecurity, Fighting Pain, Death And Loss And Hiding From The Basic Truths Of The Natural World And Of Our Own Nature.

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

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.

The Wholeness And Freedom We Seek Is Our True Nature, Who We Really Are.

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.

Without Integrity And Conscience We Lose Our Freedom.

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.

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.

Indifference Is A Misguided Way Of Defending Ourselves.

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.

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

In The Crystal Of The Awakened Consciousness, One Facet Is Love.

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

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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.

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

Indifference Pretends To Create Peace, But It Is Based On Not Caring, A Silent Resignation. It Is A Movement Away, A Separation Fed By A Subtle Fear Of The Heart. We Pull Back, Believing That What Happens To Others Is Not Our Concern. Our Courage Leaves Us. Indifference Is A Misguided Way Of Defending Ourselves.

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

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.

Tending To Ourselves, We Tend The World. Tending The World, We Tend Ourselves.

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.

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

Interconnection

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

If You Put A Spoonful Of Salt In A Cup Of Water It Tastes Very Salty. If You Put A Spoonful Of Salt In A Lake Of Fresh Water The Taste Is Still Pure And Clear. Peace Comes When Our Hearts Are Open Like The Sky, Vast As The Ocean.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

It Is Our Commitment To Wholeness That Matters, The Willingness To Unfold In Every Deep Aspect Of Our Being.

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

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.

But Forgiveness Is The Act Of Not Putting Anyone Out Of Your Heart, Even Those Who Are Acting Out Of Deep Ignorance Or Out Of Confusion And Pain.

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

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

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

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.

The Near Enemy Of Love Is Attachment. Attachment Masquerades As Love. It Says, “i Will Love This Person Because I Need Them.” Or, “i’ll Love You If You’ll Love Me Back. I’ll Love You, But Only If You Will Be The Way I Want.” This Isn’t Love At All - It Is Attachment - And Attachment Is Rigid, It Is Very Different From Love.

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.

...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.

Two Qualities Are At The Root Of All Meditation Development: Right Effort And Right Aim—arousing Effort To Aim The Mind Toward The Object.

In Deep Self Acceptance, Grows A Compassionate Understanding.

To Live Life Is To Make A Succession Of Errors. Understanding This Can Bring Us Great Ease And Forgiveness For Ourselves And Others.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

The Quieting Of Our Mind Is A Political Act.

There Is No Higher Happiness Than Peace.

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

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

An Honorable Spiritual Practice Recognizes The Losses We Have Suffered, Tells Our Story, And Sheds Our Tears To Free Us From The Past.

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.

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.

If You Want To Love, Take The Time To Listen To Your Heart. In Most Ancient And Wise Cultures It Is A Regular Practice For People To Talk To Their Heart. There Are Rituals, Stories, And Meditative Skills In Every Spiritual Tradition That Awaken The Voice Of The Heart. To Live Wisely, This Practice Is Essential, Because Our Heart Is The Source Of Our Connection To And Intimacy With All Of Life. And Life Is Love. This Mysterious Quality Of Love Is All Around Us, As Real As Gravity... Yet How Often We Forget About Love.

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

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.

In Deep Self-acceptance Grows A Compassionate Understanding. As One Zen Master Said When I Asked If He Ever Gets Angry, 'of Course I Get Angry, But Then A Few Minutes Later I Say To Myself, 'what's The Use Of This,' And I Let It Go.'

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.

True Emptiness Is Not Empty, But Contains All Things. The Mysterious And Pregnant Void Creates And Reflects All Possibilities. From It Arises Our Individuality, Which Can Be Discovered And Developed, Although Never Possessed Or Fixed.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

When We Let Go Of Our Battles And Open Our Hearts To Things As They Are, Then We Come To Rest In The Present Moment. This Is The Beginning And The End Of Spiritual Practice.

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

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.

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

In All Practices And Traditions Of Freedom, We Find The Heart's Task To Be Quite Simple. Life Offers Us Just What It Offers, And Our Task Is To Bow To It, To Meet It With Understanding And Compassion.

How Well We Have Learned To Let Go

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

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.

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.

Forgiveness Sees Wisely. It Willingly Acknowledges What Is Unjust, Harmful, And Wrong. It Bravely Recognizes Sufferings Of The Past, And Understands The Conditions That Brought Them About.forgiveness Honors The Heart's Greatest Dignity. Whenever We Are Lost, It Brings Us Back To The Ground Of Love.without Forgiveness Our Lives Are Chained, Forced To Carry The Sufferings Of The Past And Repeat Them With No Release.

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.

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?

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.

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.

If We Are Engaged In Actions That Cause Pain And Conflict To Ourselves And Others, It Is Impossible For The Mind To Become Settled, Collected, And Focused In Meditation; It Is Impossible For The Heart To Open.

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

The Waves Do Keep Coming, So Learn To Surf.

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

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.

When We Take Time To Quiet Ourselves, We Can All Sense That Our Life Could Be Lived With Greater Compassion And Greater Weakness.

Breathing Meditation Can Quiet The Mind, Open The Body, And Develop A Great Power Of Concentration.

What We Seek Is What We Are.

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.

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

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

Meditation Takes Discipline, Just Like Learning How To Play Piano. If You Want To Learn How To Play The Piano, It Takes More Than A Few Minutes A Day, Once A While, Here And There. If You Really Want To Learn Any Important Skill, Whether It Is Playing Piano Or Meditation, It Grows With Perseverance, Patience, And Systematic Training.

When We Feel Anger Toward Someone, We Can Consider That They Are A Being Just Like Us, Who Has Faced Much Suffering In Life.

Sufferings In Life

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.

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

Capacity To Love

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.

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

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.

Use Whatever Has Come To Awaken Patience, Understanding, And Love.

The Willingness To Empty Ourselves And Then Seek Our True Nature Is An Expression Of Great And Courageous Love.

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.

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.

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

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

If Your Compassion Does Not Include Yourself, It Is Incomplete.

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.

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.

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

With Growing Awareness, You Can See Where You're Caught Or Where You Suffer Or Where You Create Suffering. You Can Then Turn Toward The Difficulties That Arise In Your Life With Compassion, Bow, And Say, These Too Are Part Of Human Incarnation.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

As We Learn To Bow, We Discover That The Heart Holds More Freedom And Compassion Than We Could Imagine.

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.

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.

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.

The Goal Of Practice Is Always To Keep Our Beginner's Mind.

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.

Meditation Practice Is Neither Holding On Nor Avoiding; It Is A Settling Back Into The Moment, Opening To What Is There.

Meditation Practice

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.

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.

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.

Letting Go Is Not The Same As Aversion, Struggling To Get Rid Of Something. We Cannot Genuinely Let Go Of What We Resist. What We Resist And Fear Secretly Follows Us Even As We Push It Away. To Let Go Of Fear Or Trauma, We Need To Acknowledge Just How It Is. We Need To Feel It Fully And Accept That It Is So. It Is As It Is. Letting Go Begins With Letting Be.

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

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.

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

We Need To Learn How To Honor And Use A Practice For As Long As It Serves Us—which In Most Cases Is A Very Long Time—but To Look At It As Just That, A Vehicle, A Raft To Help Us Cross Through The Waters Of Doubt, Confusion, Desire, And Fear.

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

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.

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

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

Everybody Needs To Take Some Time, In Some Way, To Quiet Themselves And Really Listen To Their Heart.

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.

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

If Grief Or Anger Arises, Let There Be Grief Or Anger. This Is The Buddha In All Forms,sun Buddha, Moon Buddha, Happy Buddha, Sad Buddha. It Is The Universe Offering All Things To Awaken And Open Our Heart.

Life Without Forgiveness Is Unbearable.

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

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.

The Purpose Of Spiritual Life Is Not To Create Some Special State Of Mind. A State Of Mind Is Always Temporary. The Purpose Is To Work Directly With The Most Primary Elements Of Our Body And Our Mind, To See The Ways We Get Trapped By Our Fears, Desires, And Anger, To Learn Directly Our Capacity For Freedom.

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

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

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

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