Quote collection
453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there's a fundamental groundlessness. It's there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. We experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it."
"When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck."
"As we practice, we begin to know the difference between our fantasy and reality."
"Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know."
"We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake"
"Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves."
"Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us."
"There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day."
"When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?"
"Determination means to use every challenge you meet as an opportunity to open your heart and soften, determined to not withdraw."
"Until we stop clinging to the concept of good and evil, the world will continue to manifest as friendly goddesses and harmful demons."
"It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share."
"When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart."
"In the end, that's what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation."
"That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything - every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate - is always changing, moment to moment."
"In meditation, you learn how to get out of your own way long enough for there to be room for your wisdom to manifest"
"If right now our emotional reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it's because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time."
"In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, lovingkindness, freshness - anything that encourages relaxation and openness. So you're training in softening, rather than tightening, your heart. In this practice, it's not uncommon to find yourself blocked, because you come face to face with your own fear, resistance, or whatever your personal "stuckness" happens to be at that moment."
"The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us."
"We're afraid that this anger or sorrow or loneliness is going to last forever... Instead, acting it out is what makes it last."