But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.
Time is our present breath.
Mindfulness is life. Whenever we don’t have mindfulness, when we are heedless, it’s as if we are dead.
The serene and peaceful mind is the true epitome of human achievement.
If we want to really see the Buddha, we should observe his virtuous qualities. Whatever he taught, we should practise it. Only bowing to him is not enough. We need to renounce, give up, stop, so that we may see the Buddha.
Why are we born? We are born so that we will not have to be born again.
Know and watch your heart. It’s pure but emotions come to colour it.
Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.
We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us.
To give up doing evil is more important than making merit.
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.
To practice Dhamma means to observe and examine oneself.
These days people don’t search for the Truth. People study simply in order to find knowledge necessary to make a living, raise families and look after themselves, that’s all. To them, being smart is more important than being wise!
If it shouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen.
You should know both the universal and the personal, the realm of forms and the freedom to not cling to them. The forms of the world have their place, but in another way, there is nothing there. To be free, we need to respect both of these truths.
We don’t meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
If you haven’t cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn’t really begun.
The heart is the only book worth reading.
If you let go completely you will have complete peace.
When we conquer ourselves, then everything will be conquered: oneself, others, and all the sense objects as well, coming in by way of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body – it will all get conquered like this.