What if rather than being disheartened by the ambiguity, the uncertainty of life, we accepted it and relaxed into it?
According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.
We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.
The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something.
The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought.
If you aren’t feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn’t have anything to feed on.
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all.
The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward. The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be just to keep moving.
There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.
It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.
Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep.
The idea of karma is that you continually get the teaching that you need to open your heart.
The more neurosis the more wisdom.
It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.
To cultivate equanimity we practice catching ourselves when we feel attraction or aversion, before it hardens into grasping or negativity.
Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?
Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.