Quotes About Awareness

Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

When we don't act out and we don't repress, our passion, our aggression, and our ignorance become our wealth. We don't have to transform anything. Simply letting go of the story line is what it takes, which is not all that easy.

We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing.

Seeing when you justify yourself and when you blame others is not a reason to criticize yourself, but actually an opportunity to recognize what all people do and how it imprisons us in a very limited perspective of this world.

In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.

One popular way of relating to physical pain is mindfulness meditation. It involves directing your full attention to the pain and breathing in and out of the spot that hurts. Instead of trying to avoid the discomfort, you open yourself completely to it. You become receptive to the painful sensation without dwelling on the story your mind has concocted: It's bad; I shouldn't feel this way; maybe it will never go away.

Everything in our lives can wake us up or put us to sleep, and basically it's up to us to let it wake us up.

The most heartbreaking thing of all is how we cheat ourselves of the present moment.

We're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're rediscovering, reconnecting with who we are.

think of a time when you were angry, when someone said or did something that you didn't like, a time when you wanted to get even or you wanted to vent. Now, what if you had been able to stop, breathe deeply, and slow the process down? Right on the spot you could connect with natural openness. You could stop, give space, and empower the wolf of patience and courage instead of the wolf of aggression and violence.

The first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort.

Many religions have meditations on death to let it penetrate our thick skulls that life doesn't last forever.

Without the words, without the repetitive thoughts, the emotions don't last longer than one and a half minutes.

It's like this for all of us initially. We can contact our inner strength, our natural openness, for short periods before getting swept away. And this is excellent, heroic, a huge step in interrupting and weakening our ancient habits. If we keep a sense of humor and stay with it for the long haul, the ability to be present just naturally evolves. Gradually we lose our appetite for biting the hook. We lose our appetite for aggression. If

do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn't matter at all.

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.

Just as the Buddha taught, it's important to see suffering as suffering. We are not talking about ignoring or keeping quiet. When we don't buy into our opinions and solidify the sense of enemy, we will accomplish something. If we don't get swept away by our outrage, then we will see the cause of suffering more clearly. That is how the cessation of suffering evolves.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

a psychotic person is drowning in the very same things that a mystic swims in.

THE BUDDHA TAUGHT that there are three principal characteristics of human existence: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction. According to the Buddha, the lives of all beings are marked by these three qualities. Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are. When

The trick is not getting caught in hope and fear.

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.

I hold my teachers, beginning with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, so dear to me because of how they've been able to show me—and model for me—my own potential. It's like meeting a part of yourself that you didn't even know was there.

all of us have had to start in the same place—as confused, reactive, but basically good human beings.