Most spiritual experiences begin with suffering. They begin with groundlessness. They begin when the rug has been pulled out from under us.
If it’s painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.
We don’t experience the world fully unless we are willing to give everything away. Samaya means not holding anything back, not preparing our escape route, not looking for alternatives, not thinking that there is ample time to do things later.
Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you’re always standing at the center of the world.
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future.
Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.
Wholeheartedly do what it takes to awaken your clear-seeing intelligence, but one day at a time, one moment at a time. If we live that way, we will benefit this earth.
In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal – quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is.
Share the wealth. Be generous with your joy. Give away what you most want. Be generous with your insights and delights.
Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.
It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.
Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself.
But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.
Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what’s happening.
Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Are you experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay!
The future is the result of what we do right now.
If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn’t inherent in the place but in your state of mind.
The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last – that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.