In the endthese things matter most:How well did you love?How fully did you live?How deeply did you let go?
In the end, just three things matter:How well we have livedHow well we have lovedHow well we have learned to let go
Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
Attachment is conditional, offers love only to certain people in certain ways; it is exclusive. Love, in the sense of metta, used by Buddha, is a universal, nondiscriminating feeling of caring and connectedness.
In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!
When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.
As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
If you put a spoonful of saltin a cup of waterit tastes very salty.If you put a spoonful of saltin a lake of fresh waterthe taste is still pure and clear.Peace comes when our hearts areopen like the sky,vast as the ocean.
Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.
In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.
Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.
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.
The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is simply to release any images and emotions.
The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.
When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.
Acceptance is not passivity. It is a courageous step in the process of transformation.
The words of the Buddha offer this truth: ∼ Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.
The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding.
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.