Quotes About Awareness

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 interesting thing is that, as we open more and more, it's the big ones that immediately wake us up and the little things that catch us off guard. However, no matter what the size, color, or shape is, the point is still to lean toward the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than to protect ourselves from it.

We can't control what's going to happen but we can grow in awareness of what is happening.

The basic thing is to realize that we have everything going for us. We don't have extreme pain that's inescapable. We don't have total pleasure that lulls us into ignorance. When we start feeling depressed, it's helpful to reflect on that. Maybe this is a good time to read the newspapers a lot and remember how terrifying life can be.

We turn our emotions into frozen objects and invest them with truth, and as a result they have so much power over us.

THE DHARMA—the Buddha's teaching—is about letting go of the story line and opening to what is: to the people in our life, to the situations we're in, to our thoughts, to our emotions. We have a certain life, and whatever life we're in is a vehicle for waking up.

Beginning to realize how precious life is becomes one of your most powerful tools.

When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. There is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness.

Pema Chödrön

From this point of view, the only time we ever know what's really going on is when the rug's been pulled out and we can't find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep.

Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along

Dharma is the study of what is , and the only way you can find out what is true is through studying yourself.

We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

If you realize that you don't have that many more years to live and if you live your life as if you actually had only a day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of preciousness and gratitude.

Remembering impermanence motivates you to go back and look at the teachings, to see what they tell you about how to work with your life, how to rouse yourself, how to cheer up, how to work with emotions.

I learned today that life is very precious. Even when we're determined to block the magic, it will get through and wake us up.

Impermanence can teach you a lot about how to cheer up.

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.

Fear can make you start asking a lot of questions. If it doesn't get you down, it's going to start you wondering, "What's this fear? Where did it come from? What am I scared of?" Maybe you're scared of the most exciting things you have yet to learn. Impermanence is a great reminder.

The third reminder is karma: every action has a result. One could give a whole seminar on the law of karma. But fundamentally, in our everyday life, it's a reminder that it's important how we live.

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.

It's up to you how to use your life. It doesn't mean that you have to be the best one at cheering up, or that your habitual tendencies never get the better of you. It just has to do with this sense of reminding yourself.

El miedo es una reacción natural al acercarse a la verdad.

Emotions cannot take off and escalate if the mind is steady.