Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.
Life is a second-by-second miracle.
All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That’s all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.
Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don’t want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is.
We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall.
We are just living this moment; we don’t have to live 150,000 moments at once. We are only living one. That’s why I say you might as well practice with each moment.
None of us would choose to be Sisyphus; yet in a sense, we all are.
We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.
Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.
In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
Meditation is not about doing something.
To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.
We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other.
To some degree we all find life difficult, perplexing, and oppressive. Even when it goes well, as it may for a time, we worry that it probably won’t keep on that way.
Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television.
There are many people in the world who feel that if only they had a bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a more understanding boss, or a more interesting partner, then their life would work. We all go through that one. Slowly we wear out most of our ’if onlies.
An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.
We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.
We’re constantly waking up to what we’re about, what we’re really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that’s painful. But there’s no possibility of freedom without this pain.