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March 21, 2021
Breathe in and tell yourself that a new day has been offered to you, and you have to be here to live it.
In Buddhist meditation, you do not turn yourself into a battlefield, with good fighting against evil. Both sides belong to you, the good and the evil.
It is not only your love that is organic; your hate is, too. So you should not throw anything out. All you have to do is learn how to transform your garbage into flowers.
You are here for life; and if you are here for life, life will be here for you.
Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.
You have all you need—legs, lungs, eyes, and mind—and with a little bit of practice, you can generate the energy of mindfulness within you, just like lighting a lamp.
Many people aspire to go to a place where pain and suffering do not exist, a place where there is only happiness. This is a rather dangerous idea, for compassion is not possible without pain and suffering.
Without suffering, we do not have the opportunity to cultivate compassion and understanding; and without understanding, there can be no true love.
We should not try to escape from our pain. We should look at it directly. Looking at suffering deeply, we will have deep insight into its nature, and the path of transformation and healing will present itself to us.
Don’t underestimate yourself: you have the ability to wake up.
When you touch and embrace your heart with the energy of mindfulness, you are already practicing love.
Every time you need this seed, touch it with mindful breathing. Then the energy of mindfulness will make its appearance, and you will be able to embrace the pain that is within you.
Nothing exists as a permanent entity; everything changes.
There is no such thing as a self, no absolute, permanent entity to be found in the element we call “body.” In our ignorance we believe that there is a permanent entity in us, and our pain and suffering manifest on the basis of that ignorance.
When we have an unpleasant feeling, we say to ourselves, “This feeling is in me, it will stay for a while, and then it will disappear because it is impermanent.”
In most cases, our perceptions are inaccurate, and we suffer because we are too sure of them. Look at your perceptions and smile to them. Breathe, look deeply into their nature, and you will see that there are many errors in them.
It is important not to be a victim of your false perceptions. If you are the victim of your false perceptions, you will suffer a lot. You have to sit down and look at perceptions very calmly. You have to look into the deepest part of their nature in order to detect what is false about them.
Consciousness is like the soil in which the seeds of the mental formations are preserved. Each of the fifty-one mental formations lies buried in the soil of consciousness in the form of a seed (bija in Sanskrit). When the conditions are sufficient, these seeds manifest as mental formations, such as perceptions, feelings, anger, compassion, and so on.
The seeds of negativity are always there, but very positive seeds also exist, such as the seeds of compassion, tolerance, and love. These seeds are all there in the soil, but without rain they cannot manifest. Our practice is to recognize and water the positive seeds. If you recognize the seed of compassion in yourself, you should make sure that it is watered several times every day.
Through the practice of deep looking, we can identify the positive seeds that we want to water every day, and train ourselves not to water the negative ones. This is called “selective watering.”
If you practice in such a way that harmony is established in the realm of the five elements, then joy, peace, and happiness will be possible.
To be truly here, we have to bring the body back to the mind and the mind back to the body. We have to bring about what is called the unity of body and mind.
The breath is like a bridge that links our body and mind.
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
“I think, therefore I am . . . not here.”
As you breathe in, you practice arriving. You have arrived. Your destination is the here and now.
Happiness does not seem possible to you in the here and now, so you look for it in the distant future. The practice consists of stopping that habit of running.
The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in, I arrive. Breathing out, I arrive.”
You have to eat like a free person. Don’t allow worries, thoughts, and plans to drag you away from the here and now. Having a meal is a very deep practice.
We don’t need to die in order to enter into the Kingdom of God; in fact, we have to be very much alive.
I have arrived, I am home, In the here and in the now. I am solid, I am free, In the ultimate I dwell.
Stop running, because life is here, in the present moment.
If you look into Buddhist meditation, you will find that it has two aspects: first, stopping, and then, deep looking.
Taking back your sovereignty is the practice. You are more solid and more free. The greater your freedom, the greater your happiness.
When we look deeply at our own nature, we can get in touch with its ultimate reality. This ultimate nature is free of birth, free of death, free from any notion such as high, low, this, that, and so forth. In Buddhism, we call this nirvana, or “suchness.” Nirvana is the extinction of all concepts, such as existence, nonexistence, death, and birth.
If the wave realizes that it is water, its fear disappears. It enjoys its rising and falling much more. Rising is joyful, and falling is, too. There is no birth and there is no death.
