Quotes About Practice

First character, then ability.

it may require ongoing and intensive support from teachers and other practitioners to remind you to keep applying these interventions.

The medicine for that is to remember that the main goal in meditation is not to get to certain good states, but rather to eliminate what gets in the way of those good states. If you do that, those good states will be available any time you wish.

He then said something even more mind-boggling. "As a general principle, any positive state that you experience within the context of silent sitting practice, you must try to attain in the midst of ordinary life.

Often meditation works this way: we measure its value in terms of the suffering that would have happened but didn't—thanks to the fact that we have a practice.

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.

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.

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

In the last five years I used to go to Zen practice once a month, but since I assumed the post of prime minister it's been much harder.

You cannot learn to swim by reading a book. You have to get into the water.

All we can do is to try in each moment, whatever we are doing, to practice the Buddha Way; we just keep opening the hand of thought and continuing to practice. There is no time when one can say, "I'm finished—now I have finally reached the level of an enlightened person.

Shikantaza is not a practice carried out by the individual. It is, rather, a practice in which we let go of the individual karmic self that is constantly seeking to satisfy its own desires.

People often ask me, "What is the S?t? Zen view of rebirth?" This is a difficult question because D?gen Zenji, I believe, advocates "not knowing" in this case. Rather than offering us a consistent view on rebirth, he teaches that we should let go of our limiting concepts and beliefs and simply practice right here, right now.

We may cultivate, for example, our reputation as a sincere and virtuous practitioner, instead of simply practicing sincerely and nurturing our virtues

When we wear the okesa, we are also farming. This is the meaning of "robe of virtuous field" (fukuden-e). This body and mind is the field we work. It is not a field of fortune from which we can expect to receive blessings without practice. We have to cultivate our life.

When practicing shikantaza, we do nothing but sit with the whole body and mind. We do nothing with the mind, so this is not actually a meditation practice. In this zazen we don't practice with a mantra or contemplate anything. We don't count or watch the breath. We don't try to concentrate the mind on any particular object or use any other meditation techniques; we really just sit with both body and mind.

If rebirth exists, that is all right: I will simply try to continue practicing everything good and refrain from everything bad through my next life. If there is no rebirth, I will have nothing to do after my death and I will have no need to consider my practice. This was my view of rebirth for most of my life as a Buddhist.

Waves are the practice of the water.

When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice.

Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up.

You do not say, "This is enlightenment," or "That is not right practice." Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice.

If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice.

Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it.

It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it.