Quote collection
453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all."
"You are the sky. Everything else - it’s just the weather."
"We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice."
"Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."
"Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning to the very end, pointing to our own hearts to discover what is true isn’t just a matter of honesty but also of compassion and respect for what we see."
"Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality."
"When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it."
"Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path."
"Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear."
"The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle."
"We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves."
"Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away."
"When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless."
"Anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time."
"It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied."
"Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening."
"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals."
"We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives."
"We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's the essence of samsara - the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places."
"As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people."