The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.
Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.
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.
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.
Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.
Anger shows us precisely where we are stuck, where our limits are, where we cling to beliefs and fears.
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.
We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy – material or spiritual.
The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are.
As we step out of the way new things are born.
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.
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless.
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
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.
Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.
What we seek is what we are.