Quotes About Awareness

Listen Bhikkhus, just as a buffalo boy recognizes each of his own buffaloes, a bhikkhu recognizes each of the essential elements of his own body. Just as a buffalo boy knows the characteristics and tendencies of each buffalo, a bhikkhu knows which actions of body, speech, and mind are worthy and which are not. Just as a buffalo boy scrubs his animals clean, a bhikkhu must cleanse his mind and body of desires, attachments, anger, and aversions.

Concentration is not wholesome in itself. A thief needs concentration to break into a house. The object of our concentration is what makes it beneficial or not. If you use meditative concentration to run away from reality, that is not beneficial.

With mindful awareness, we can look into the nature of our suffering and find out what kind of food we have been supplying to keep it alive. When we find the source of nourishment for our suffering, we can cut off that supply, and our suffering will fade.

Whether you can see the Buddha or not depends on you, on the state of your being.

The way out is in.

When our mindfulness embraces those who we love, they will bloom like flowers

It is only when we stop that we can encounter life.

Chopping wood is meditation. Carrying water is meditation. Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. Each act is a rite, a ceremony. Raising your cup of tea to your mouth is a rite. Does the word rite seems too solemn ? I use that word in order to jolt you into the realization of the life-and-death matter of awareness.

Waking up this morning I smile. I have twenty-four hours to live. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at the beings around me with the eyes of compassion.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.

It's like when you climb a ladder. When you get to the fourth rung, you may think you are on the highest step and cannot go higher, so you hold on to the fourth rung. But in fact there is a fifth rung; if you want to get to it, you have to be willing to abandon the fourth rung. Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions. This is why we must always ask ourselves, "Am I sure?

To love is, first of all, to accept ourselves as we are.

What is the purpose of eating a tangerine? It is to eat the tanger­ine. During the time you eat a tangerine, eating that tanger­ine is the most important thing in your life.

They did not know that when the mind divides reality up, when it judges and discriminates, it kills paradise. Please do not scold the sunlight. Do not chastise the clear stream or the little birds of spring.

antes de que podamos hacer cambios significativos en nuestras vidas, hemos examinar nuestra dieta, nuestra forma de consumir. Hemos de vivir de manera que dejemos de consumir las cosas que no se envenenan y nos intoxican. Entonces tendremos la fuerza para permitir que aflore lo mejor de nosotros y ya no seremos víctimas de la ira y de la frustración nunca más .

How we deal with our daily lives is the most important question.

Freedom is above all else freedom from our own notions and concepts. If we get caught in our notions and concepts, we can make ourselves suffer and we can also make those we love suffer.

Only the present moment is real.

You wash your hands, you dress yourself, you perform everyday actions as before; but now you are aware of all your actions, words, and thoughts.

Whenever you see an unpleasant mental formation manifesting, call on the seed of mindfulness to manifest as a second energy in your mind consciousness in order to recognize, embrace, and calm the negative mental formation, so you can look deeply into the negativity to see its source.

It only takes one breath to return to your true home

The deep insight of impermanence is what helps us do this. It is very useful to keep our concentration on impermanence alive. You think the other person in your life is going to be there forever, but that is not true. That person is impermanent, just like you. So if you can do something to make that person happy, you should do it right away. Anything you can do or say to make him or her happy—say it or do it now. It's now or never.

The Chinese translate Four Noble Truths as Four Wonderful Truths or Four Holy Truths. Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it. If we don't, it isn't holy at all.

Breathing in, I know I'm breathing in. Breathing out, I know I'm breathing out.