"Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels."
-Bertolt Brecht (via quotedojo)
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@zenfarmer
"Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels."
-Bertolt Brecht (via quotedojo)
Nirvana is Right Here
‘We do not see that our life is right here, right now, is nirvana. Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think that nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must understand that nirvana is right here, right now.
Do not be dualistic. Truly be one with your life as the subtle mind of nirvana. This is what subtle means. Something is subtle not because it is hidden, nor because it is elusive, but because it is right here. We don’t see it precisely because it is right in font of us. In fact, we are living it. When we live it we don’t think about it. The minute we think about it, we are functioning in the dualistic state and don’t see what our life is.’
- Taizan Maezumin, Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice.
The Practice of Self-Reflection
'Looking in the Mirror
When we look in the mirror, the one thing we don’t want to see is an ordinary human being. We would like to see someone special. Whether we are conscious of this or not, we are simply not content to see an ordinary human being with neuroses, obstacles, and problems.
We want to see a happy person, but instead we see someone who is struggling. We want to think of ourselves as compassionate, but instead we see someone who is selfish. We long to be elegant, but our arrogance makes us crass. And instead of a strong or immortal person, we see someone who is vulnerable to the four streams of birth, old age, sickness, and death. The conflict between what we see and what we want to see causes tremendous pain.
The Pain of Self-Importance
We are imprisoned in this pain by a sense of specialness, of self-importance. Self-importance is the underlying clinging we have to “I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine,” which colors all of our experience. If we look closely, we find a strong element of self-importance in everything we think, say, and do. “How can I feel good? What will others think? What will I gain? What will I lose?” These questions are all rooted in our self-importance. Even our feeling of not measuring up to who we think we should be is a form of self-importance.
We like to see ourselves as strong and in control, but we are more like a fragile eggshell that is easily broken. This makes us feel deeply vulnerable - and not in a good way. The vulnerable self requires protection, armoring, the gathering of forces and the construction of walls. As a result we become fearful of relaxing with things as they are and increasingly uncertain that anything will work out the way we would like.
It takes courage to go beyond self-importance and see who we really are - but this is our path. The point of all Buddhist teachings - formal or informal - is to reduce self-importance and make room for the truth. This process begins with self-reflection.’
- Dzigar Kongtrul, It’s Up to You, The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path.
From today, February 26, through Monday, March 2, you can download the Kindle version of Looking 4 Truths for free. Please go to my author’s page at http://amazon.com/author/zenpeter download a free copy now.
Looking 4 Truths: Using Zen and Mindfulness to Transform Your Life – Zen...
Meditate Like a Mother
'When the mother hears her baby crying, she puts down whatever she has in her hands, she goes into its room, and takes the baby in her arms. The moment the baby is lifted into the mother's arms, the energy of wisdom already begins to penetrate into the baby's body. The mother does not know yet what is the matter with the baby, but the fact that she has it in her arms already gives her child some relief. The baby stops crying. Then the mother continues to hold the baby in her arms, she continues to offer it the energy of tenderness, and during this time the mother practices deep looking. A mother is a very talented person. She only needs two or three minutes to figure out what is the matter with her baby. Maybe its diapers are a little bit too tight; maybe the baby has a touch of fever, maybe it needs a bottle? Then when the understanding comes, the mother can transform the situation immediately.
It is the same thing with meditation. When you have pain within you, the first thing to do id to bring the energy of mindfulness to embrace the pain. “I know that you are there, little anger, my old friend. Breath - I am taking care of you now.”’
- Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart.
Don’t blame others. Look to your dissatisfied mind instead.
Sensei Janet Abels (via flowgently)
We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn’t care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.
Shunryu Suzuki (via ashramof1)
To Oz…
Compassion is a Spark of Light
'Meditation is relating yourself with yourself, and it is also relating yourself with your world. Through the practice of meditation, you are able to synchronize your world and yourself together. Working with the two eventually produces a spark. It is like rubbing two sticks together or striking a flint against a stone to produce a spark. The spark of light you produce is called compassion.
- Chogyam Trungpa, Why We Meditate.
This is what the dharma practitioner needs to understand — that the whole of samsara, or nirvana, is as essenceless or untrue as that film. Until we see this, it will be very difficult for dharma to sink into our minds. We will always be carried away, seduced by the glory and beauty of this world, by all the apparent success and failure. However, once we see, even just for a second, that these appearances are not real, we will gain a certain confidence. This doesn’t mean that we have to rush off to Nepal or India and become a monk or nun. We can still keep our jobs, wear a suit and tie and go with our briefcase to the office every day. We can still fall in love, offer our loved one flowers, exchange rings. But somewhere inside there is something telling us that all this is essenceless. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
(via thetaooflife)
Acceptance
'To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form that his thought. There is no escape.'
- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.
Training the Mind
'The object of meditation is the mind. For the moment, it is simultaneously confused, agitated, rebellious, and subject to innumerable conditioned and automatic patterns. The goal of meditation is not to shut down the mind or anesthetize it, but to make it free, lucid and balanced.
According to Buddhism, the mind is not an entity but a dynamic stream of experiences, a succession of moments of consciousness. These experiences are often marked by confusion and suffering, but we can also live them in a spacious state of clarity and inner freedom.
We all well know, as contemporary Tibetan master Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche reminds us, that “we don’t need to train our minds to improve our ability to get upset or jealous. We don’t need an anger accelerator or a pride amplifier.” By contrast, training the mind is crucial if we want to refine and sharpen our attention; develop emotional balance, inner peace, and wisdom; and cultivate dedication to the welfare of others. We have within ourselves the potential to develop these qualities, but they will not develop by themselves or just because we want them to. They require training. And all training requires perseverance and enthusiasm. We won’t learn to ski by practicing one or two minutes a month.’
- Matthieu Ricard, Why Meditate?: Working with Thoughts and Emotions.
atraversso: Perfect by Jon Mikan
Understanding Attachment & Suffering
Probably the most common question I receive is some variation of “what is attachment and how do I get rid of it”? It is a vexing problem for a teacher, especially one who teaches people brought up in a Western tradition. You see, we Westerners are materialistic in a way many other cultures are not. Now, I do not mean this as a criticism of Western culture.
By materialistic I do not mean greedy, selfish or shallow. It is just that our society places a great deal of importance on “things” on “ownership” and “possessing”. One might argue that this is one of the things that has made Western culture so successful in this realm. However, it does often cloud the thinking when it comes to the Buddhist concept of attachment
Many Westerners brought up in a Christian tradition believe that by avoiding attachment we mean retreating from the world, giving away our possessions and living in poverty. This is ironic because that is precisely what Jesus taught. However, in Buddhism this is not the case.
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It was January of 1973 when two married undergraduates at the University of California at Berkeley Marty and Mickey Ackerman attended an afternoon lecture by noted scholar Dr. Alan Wilson Watts entitled “Nothingness and the Way of Zen”. After the lecture the two students spoke with Dr. Watts...
If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.
Chögyam Trungpa (via purplebuddhaproject)