Quotes from Shinzen Young

Is meditation really that valuable? Yes it is, because a person's base level of concentration is, in a sense, the most valuable thing that they have. Anything a person may want will be more easily attained if they are functioning from a high level of effortless focus. The entire range of human endeavors relies on concentration, and if your base level of concentration is elevated through practice, it means that you can function from a continuous state of extraordinary focus every day.

Freedom should be manifested within clear ethical guidelines and an egalitarian feedback structure. Informed

On one hand, deeper and deeper meditative states become available. On the other, you are able to maintain those states throughout more and more complex activities of life. We might refer to the first dimension of growth as depth and the second dimension of growth as breadth.

unbalanced view of the nature of sensory experience.

a beginning meditator can sometimes get a taste of the stage that, according to the Visuddhimagga, immediately precedes enlightenment.

your attention is pointed directly toward the richness of the Source.

It's not intuitively obvious that noting Gone would bring fulfillment, but many people over the ages have discovered this, hence the Sanskrit word nirvana. Are there any other counterintuitive "Gone goodies"? Indeed, yes. There is one more major one.

Gone points to the Source of your own consciousness.

The myriad of complex meanings is simplified into a tetrad of basic states: mental image without any accompanying mental talk, mental talk without any accompanying mental image, image and talk at the same time, or absence of both image and talk (a moment of total mental tranquility).

That's because they came up with an elegant classification—the periodic table of chemical elements. This allowed them to distinguish the basic building blocks. This in turn revealed that a relatively small set of elements can explain the enormously diverse range of substances and chemical properties. This basic strategy of analyzing complex phenomena into simpler elements is part of the "secret sauce" that makes science so powerful.

you can actually taste the sources of unhappiness breaking up….The taste of purification can't be put into words, but its acquisition marks the transition to a mature spiritual palate…There is a taste that comes about, when a person experiences pleasure or pain with equanimity. It doesn't matter if…emotions or physical pain exist. Every moment of the future will become marginally less filled with suffering and more fulfilling….

If science were to make enlightenment massively available to humanity, we should expect to see numerous and stunning positive improvements in the human situation: dramatic reduction in conflict and violence from the interpersonal level to the international level, reduction in crime and substance addiction, vast improvement in the global baseline of physical and mental health, and probably even a general elevation of human intelligence.

Because Shingon is Vajrayana, the main meditation practice involves working with visualizations, mantras, and mudra gestures. You replace your self-image with that of an archetype, you replace your usual mental talk with the mantra of that archetype, and you take on the physical and emotional body experience of that archetype through making mudras—ritual hand gestures. If your concentration is good enough, your identity briefly shifts. You become that archetype.

It is not unreasonable that in contact with modern science, and inspired by the spirit of history, the original discoveries of Gautama, rigorized and extended, will play a large part in the direction of human destiny.

But in my experience as a teacher, enlightenment usually sneaks up on people. Sometimes they don't quite realize how enlightened they've become over time because they have gradually acclimatized to it.

A sensory experience is just some tiny part of the universe—the wind touching your face, an act of making love, tying your shoes, being angry with a student—yet when we experience any of these completely, it links us to the fullness of Creation and the vacuity of the Creator.

Enlightenment is not a peak from which you descend over time. It is a plateau from which you ascend, further and further as the months, years, and decades pass.

I often say that my life's passion lies in exploring what may arise from the cross-fertilization of the best of the East with the best of the West. Meditation is the systematic exploration of nature from the inside, and the East has done better than anyone else. Science is systematic exploration of nature from the outside. It's what the West did best—at least between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

On the one hand, the Buddha put a lot of emphasis on pursuing "The Noble Quest." Which is the right point of view: Pursuing The Noble Quest or Calling Off the Search? Both, not neither!

He was a rationalist, he downplayed the role of authority, and he was critical of the inequities of the caste system as it existed then. He was the only religious leader in the history of the world who asked people not to follow his teachings based on his authority. That's a quite modern, egalitarian, and refreshing point of view.

Five decades ago, some very kind people in Japan slipped me the secret: you can dramatically extend life—not by multiplying the number of your years, but by expanding the fullness of your moments. Knowing that I have

As long as something wants to arise, let it. As long as something wants to last, let it. As soon as something wants to pass, let it.

Suffering = Pain x Resistance

Compassion is to share the pain without sharing the suffering.