What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating – the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to – you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide.
It is compassion, then, that is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing.
Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being.
In this complex world, the best way to survive is to be genuine.
Just as if you put your finger into water, it will get wet, and if you put it into fire, it will burn, so if you invest your mind in the wisdom mind of the Buddhas, it will transform into their wisdom nature.
Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.
Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.
I can’t say it strongly enough; to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation.
Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.
The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax!
Meditation is bringing the mind home.
Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth.
Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.
Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.
The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death.
Learning to live is learning to let go.
When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.
Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.