Quotes About Awareness

The rain in the morning isn't good or bad, comforting or threatening. It's not even "rain." It's just what it is.

addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it.

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something—usually ourselves.

When my children were teenagers, I took them to meet the Sixteenth Karmapa. As they weren't Buddhists, I asked His Holiness to say something that didn't require any understanding of the dharma. Without hesitating, he told them: "You are going to die; and when you do, you will take nothing with you but your state of mind.

The secret of Zen is just two words: not always so. —SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI

When I realize I'm triggered, I think of it as a neutral moment, a moment in time, a moment of truth that can go either way. What I'm advocating is that in that precious moment we start to make choices that lead to happiness and freedom rather than choices that lead to unnecessary suffering and the obscuration of our intelligence, our warmth, our capacity to remain open and present with the natural movement of life.

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

In Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight, she points to scientific evidence showing that the life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion and get it going again.

If we don't look into hope and fear, seeing a thought arise, seeing the chain reaction that follows—if we don't train in sitting with that energy without getting snared by the drama, then we're always going to be afraid.

Rather than trying to get rid of an obstacle or buying into a sense of being attacked, we can use it to see what we do when we're squeezed.

In reality, whatever arises in our experience is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. Yet we spend so much energy and suffer so much because we believe in all these concepts.

The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society.

The towns and countryside that the traveler sees through a train window do not slow down the train, nor does the train affect them. Neither disturbs the other. This is how you should see the thoughts that pass through your mind when you meditate. —DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE

Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.

Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you're always in the middle of the universe and the circle is always around you. Everyone who walks up to you has entered that scared space, and it's not an accident. Whatever comes into the space is there to teach you.

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

Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look. That's the compassionate thing to do. That's the brave thing to do. We could smell that piece of shit. We could feel it; what is its texture, color, and shape?

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.

There is, however, no need to be a prophet of doom or for us to go around living in constant dread. Our situation is definitely workable. By learning not to bite the hook now, with the little annoyances of an ordinary day, we'll be preparing ourselves to work with whatever lies ahead with compassion and wisdom.

So whether it's anger or craving or jealousy or fear or depression—whatever it might be—the notion is not to try to get rid of it, but to make friends with it. That means getting to know it completely, with some kind of softness, and learning how, once you've experienced it fully, to let go.

The point is that you begin where you are, you see what a child you are, and you don't criticize that. You begin to explore, with a lot of humor and generosity toward yourself, all the places where you cling, and every time you cling, you realize, "Ah!

What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye—not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking.

The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness.