You can pick all the flowers but you can’t stop the spring. – PABLO NERUDA.
Because love, compassion, and joy can lead to excessive attachment, their warmth needs to be balanced with equanimity. Because equanimity can lead to excessive detachment, its coolness needs to be balanced with love, compassion, and joy. Established together, these radiant qualities express mental harmony.
Free your heart. Travel like the moon among the stars. – BUDDHA.
To protect the separate self, we push certain things away, while to bolster it we hold on to other things and identify with them. A.
The truth is that things change whether we want them to or not. Becoming attached to things as they are or pushing things away that we do not like does not stop them from changing. It only leads to further suffering.
The society that denies its poverty and injustice has lost a part of its freedom as well. If we deny our dissatisfaction, our anger, our pain, our ambition, we will suffer. If we deny our values, our beliefs, our longings, or our goodness, we will suffer.
O Nobly Born, now there is born in you exceeding compassion for all those living creatures who have forgotten their true nature. – Mahamudra text of Tibetan yogi Longchenpa.
We note feelings and find that they last for only a few seconds. We pay attention to thoughts and find that they are ephemeral, that they come and go, uninvited, like clouds.
Accumulated knots in the fabric of our body, previously undetected, begin to reveal themselves as we open.
You will begin to see desire’s impermanent nature, and you will also realize that you do not have to act on every thought or desire. You will learn that you can choose from the many possibilities of how to respond to desire when it arises, and you can discover a new kind of freedom, where you do not have to follow your desires, but can choose to behave in new ways in response to your desires.
Right before anger arises, there is often a sense of hurt or fear or loss. When you can feel that, you can notice how little compassion or kindness you have for yourself and others. When we feel fear or when we feel pain or when we feel hurt, our response is often anger, but what is most healing is to acknowledge the anger and to notice what causes it, and to hold that in our attention.
Then one day you will be sitting and fear will arise, and you will feel it and recognize it and think, “Oh, this is fear, I recognize you. Welcome back.” Then it is as if the fear becomes one of your friends.
In truly listening to our most painful songs, we can learn the divine art of forgiveness.
Escape from delusion is not achieved through reflective, considerate, relaxed effort. It is achieved only through the most powerful and sustained thrust of all the physical and mental capabilities at the meditator’s command. Sunlun calls for just this.
The problem with desire is that you do not desire deeply enough! Why not desire it all? You don’t like what you have and want what you don’t have. Simply reverse this. Want what you have and don’t want what you don’t have. Here you will find true fulfillment.
The warrior in your heart says stand your ground. Feel the survival of a thousand years of ancestors in your muscles and your blood. You have all the support you need in your bones.
Notice when you are open, how others relax their own defensiveness. Let yourself be curious, loving, and concerned. Learn to see in new ways. It’s never too late to open your heart and mind.
Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, he who conquers himself is the greatest warrior.
Mindfulness and fearless presence bring true protection. When we meet the world with recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-identification, we discover that wherever we are, freedom is possible, just as the rain falls on and nurtures all things equally.
Mindfulness and fearless presence bring true protection.