Quotes About Awareness

The path of meditation isn't always a linear path. It's not like you begin to open, and you open more and more and you settle more and more, and then all of a sudden the confining box is gone forever. There are setbacks. Change happens, even in our practice. This is a fundamental truth. Everything is always changing because it's alive and dynamic.

Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. It's also pretty obvious that people need help and that there's no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves.

Being caught by the lord of speech may start with just a reasonable conviction about what we feel to be true. However, if we find ourselves becoming righteously indignant, that's a sure sign that we've gone too far and that our ability to effect change will be hindered.

Then I remembered: sitting still in the middle of a fire or a tornado or an earthquake or a tidal wave, sitting still. This provides the opportunity to experience once again the living quality of our life's energy—earth, air, fire, and water.

resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. There is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness.

But please don't go away from here thinking that meditation is a vacation from irritation.

One piece of advice that Don Juan gave to Carlos Casteneda was to 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. That attitude leads to more appreciation and less burnout, because we do the job wholeheartedly and we care.

In the garden of gentle sanity May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness. —CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

So again, the first step is flashing some sense of openness and spaciousness, the second step is working with black in and white out, the third step is contacting something very real for us, and the fourth step is extending it out and being willing to do it for all sentient beings.

We can begin anything we do—start our day, eat a meal, or walk into a meeting—with the intention to be open, flexible, and kind.

la meditación nos ofrece la oportunidad de mantener una atención abierta y compasiva hacia todo lo que ocurre.

At the beginning joy is just a feeling that our own situation is workable. We stop looking for a more suitable place to be. We've discovered that the continual search for something better does not work out. This doesn't mean that there are suddenly flowers growing where before there were only rocks. It means we have confidence that something will grow here.

WHEN we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself.

What seems undesirable in our lives doesn't have to put us to sleep. What seems undesirable in our lives doesn't have to trigger habitual reactions. We can let it show us where we're at and let it remind us that the teachings encourage precision and gentleness, with loving-kindness toward every moment.

If spiritual practice is relaxing, if it gives us some peace of mind, that's great—but is this personal satisfaction helping us to address what's happening in the world?

When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space.

Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one" might arise. Of the two witnesses—self and other—we're the only one who knows the full truth about ourselves.

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion—the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness. In the teachings of Buddhism, we

Even if we're alone, our yawns and farts communicate.

Coming back to the present moment takes some effort, but the effort is very light. The instruction is to "touch and go." We touch thoughts by acknowledging them as thinking and then we let them go. It's a way of relaxing our struggle, like touching a bubble with a feather. It's a nonaggressive approach to being here.

THE OPPOSITE OF samsara is when all the walls fall down, when the cocoon completely disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves.

It has been said, quite accurately, that a psychotic person is drowning in the very same things that a mystic swims in.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

What's encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance. We're able to see how we run and hide and keep ourselves busy so that we never have to let our hearts be penetrated. And we're also able to see how we could open and relax.