Quotes About Clarity

Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen. The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don't feel the need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what's there.

The natural quality of mind is clear, awake, alert, and knowing. Free from fixation. By training in being present, we come to know the nature of our mind. So the more you train in being present - being right here - the more you begin to feel like your mind is sharpening up. The mind that can come back to the present is clearer and more refreshed, and it can better weather all the ambiguities, pains, and paradoxes of life.

Honestly, that is the best advice for life: no note cards.

If you acknowledge what's happening and refrain from acting, that opens up some space in your mind. Clinging to views and opinions, thinking you're always right and lording it over others, keeps you endlessly stuck.

Not getting what you want. Getting what you do not want. This is the root of all suffering. ~ Pema Chodron

You just can't fly when you're wearing socks, and shoes, and coats, and pants, and underwear. Everything has to go.

We commit to doing all it takes to free ourselves completely from all our varieties of confusion and unconscious habit and suffering, because these prevent us from being fully there for others. In the language of Buddhism, our ultimate commitment is to attain "enlightenment." In essence, this means knowing fully who we really are.

IN the morning when you wake up, reflect on the day ahead and aspire to use it to keep a wide-open heart and mind. At the end of the day, before going to sleep, think over what you've done. If you fulfilled your aspiration, even once, rejoice in that. If you went against your aspiration, rejoice that you are able to see what you did and are no longer living in ignorance. This way you will be inspired to go forward with increasing clarity, confidence, and compassion.

Another word for this is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.

The experience of labeling your thoughts "thinking" also, over time, becomes much more vivid.

you are the sky. everything else - it's just the weather.

You say to yourself, "Thinking," and as you're saying that, basically what you are doing is letting go of those thoughts. You don't repress the thoughts. You acknowledge them as "thinking" very clearly and kindly, but then you let them go.

Suzuki Roshi gave the instructions, 'sit still. Don't anticipate...

Here's something that's very helpful to know about now. The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape. During

meditation isn't about getting rid of thoughts—you'll think forever.

When we multitask and split up our mind into a million directions, we are actually creating our own suffering, because these habits strengthen strong emotional reactivity and discursive thought.

The state of nowness is available in that moment of squeeze. In that awkward, ambiguous moment is our own wisdom mind. Right there in the uncertainty of everyday chaos is our own wisdom mind.

Every time you're willing to acknowledge your thoughts, let them go, and come back to the freshness of the present moment, you're sowing seeds of wakefulness in your unconscious.

Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara4 is full of shit.

Dzigar Kongtrül has a sign on the front door of his retreat cabin that reads, "Don't believe everything you think." That's the basic idea here.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

strengthening habitual patterns of suffering. We begin to see this more and more clearly, and we begin to realize that we can do something different.