Quotes from Larry Rosenberg

The cultivation of mindfulness is ultimately a matter of life and death, not in a scary way, but in the sense that we are always at risk, in every moment, for missing what is deepest and richest in our lives, the texture of the tapestry itself. We might say (every pun intended) that the richness lies right beneath our noses in any and every moment.

The act of breathing begins our life as we come out of the womb; in our last moment, when we cease breathing, our life is over. It only makes sense that the breath should also have a profound influence on all the moments in between.

We see that fear isn't something we own or have any control over. We've been living as if we do, as if we should be able not to feel it. But all we can do is meet it skillfully.

It's actually wonderful to see that you're nobody and that all the fear you've had all your life was in relation to this self you thought you had.

No two breaths are the same; no two moments are the same. Each one is our life. Each one is infinitely deep and complete in itself. The challenge here is to embody and live this awareness, to work with the automatic habits of mind that would turn us into automatons and betray our genius, to walk our own path, as Larry is continually encouraging the reader to do, to find our own way, breath by breath, to taste silence and discover liberation within each and any breath.

The way to get from point A to point B is really to be at A.

As we approached the forty-five-day mark, we heard that it was an ancient tradition at that monastery to spend one week in the middle of the ninety days without any sleep at all.

Reading has been very different for me ever since, much lighter, with less attachment.

You may also notice the stillness of the pause between breaths.

The target is everywhere.

It is also sometimes shocking to see what the mind is taken up with, the way it spends its day, perhaps in sharp contrast to what you're actually doing, or to your sense of who you are.

It can be wonderful to see something about ourselves, even when what we're seeing is not especially wonderful.

Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha. —Ajahn Chah

But finally, you're not studying Buddhism. You're studying you.

You might from that vantage point go back and study impermanence with the other contemplations, seeing that the breath itself, for instance, arises and passes away.

I'd read a great many books, even Dharma books, but I was making this itch into one of the worst catastrophes in human history.

Desire isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we need to see how pervasive and driven this whole tendency is, and bring some balance to it, so that we give ourselves some choices.

This process—of appropriating everything as me or mine—is constantly going on and has as its whole basis the existence of a self.

It isn't the day you finally push the boulder up the hill and it stays. (Then what would you do?)

They might spend years tracing some mental formation back to its source.

Now I look at this story and it seems to be about all of us.

You see that in a certain sense content doesn't matter, because whatever it is passes away.

We've heard the content of our mental formations so many times we're sick of them.

It is unintelligent to try to hold on to things, to freeze them, when we can't.