Quotes About Wisdom

By cultivating nonjudgmental openness to ourselves and to whatever arises, to our surprise and delight we will find ourselves genuinely welcoming the never-pin-downable quality of life, experiencing it as a friend, a teacher, and a support, and no longer as an enemy.

Nontheism is finally realizing that there's no babysitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it's not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.

When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps, all difficulties, should be transformed into the path of enlightenment.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong.

Learning not to cause harm to ourselves or others is a basic Buddhist teaching on the healing power of nonaggression.

Meditation is a process of transformation, instead of a process of becoming more and more set in our ways. And, as you know, as we get older it's very common to become increasingly fixed in our habits. But then you do meet people who, for some reason, are becoming more and more flexible and open as they age. Which kind of person do you want to be?

WHEN we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself.

The most helpful alternative is to look objectively at what is happening and try to learn something from it, something that will enable us to see clearly how to proceed. This way of working with our propensities in our daily life will definitely pay off when we die. Before death, when actually dying, and beyond that, people predictably experience a wide range of strong emotions, and how we relate to them is important.

When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space.

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

Pema Chödrön

Looking at the arrows and swords, and how we react to them, we can always return to basic wisdom mind. Rather than trying to get rid of something or buying into a dualistic sense of being attacked, we take the opportunity to see how we close down when we're squeezed. This is how we open our hearts. It is how we awaken our intelligence and connect with fundamental buddha nature.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." At

Buddha: Hatred never ceases by hatred But by love alone is healed.

we are all a paradoxical bundle of rich potential that consists of both neurosis and wisdom.

we ourselves can sort out what to accept and what to reject. We can discern what will make us complete, sane, grown-up people, and what—if we are too involved in it—will keep us children forever. This is the process of making friends with ourselves and with our world. It involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us.

Discipline provides the support to slow down enough and be present enough so that we can live our lives without making a big mess. It provides the encouragement to step further into groundlessness.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move.

It was just as Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, "When your mind is big, thoughts are like mosquitoes buzzing around with nowhere to land.

That's what the dharma is about; turning all our habits around, reversing the process of how we make everything so solid, reversing the wheel of samsara. It starts with catching ourselves when we spin off in the same old ways. Usually we feel that there's a large problem and we have to fix it. The instruction is to stop. Do something unfamiliar. Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks.

The innocent mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular style of ignorance, unkindness, and shut-downness is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is, with gentleness.

The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding in a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been.

When the world is filled with evil, Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi.

Life is a good teacher and a good friend