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The miracle of mindfulness is, first of all, that you are here. Being truly here is very important—being here for yourself, and for the one you love. How can you love if you are not here? A fundamental condition for love is your own presence. In order to love, you must be here. That is certain.
Happiness is a function of compassion. If you do not have compassion in your heart, you do not have any happiness.
The First Noble Truth is dukkha, suffering.
The Fourth Noble Truth is magga, the path that transforms suffering into well-being.
There is no path to the cessation of suffering wi...
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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.
If you can bring a little compassion to this place, a little bit of understanding, it ceases to be hell.
Your practice consists in generating compassion and understanding and bringing them to hell.
You just need a little bit of practice to be able to touch the best that is in you.
The other is the Kingdom of God.
The message of our Buddhist practice is simple and clear: “I am here for you.”
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. If we touch deeply the non-self nature in us, we can get out of that suffering.
When conditions are sufficient, something manifests. That is what we call a formation. The flower is a formation, and so are the cloud and the sun. I am a formation, and you are a formation. Your anger and your hope are mental formations. In my tradition of Buddhism, we speak in terms of fifty-one mental formations. When I was a novice, I had to learn them by heart. The elements of feelings and perceptions are considered mental formations, but these two are considered to be so significant that they are treated as their own separate skandhas. That leaves another forty-nine. Our fear,
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are among the forty-nine remaining mental formations.
The breath is like a bridge that links our body and mind. If you come back to your breathing, your body and your mind begin to come back together again.
With each step you take, you arrive in the here and now. You can walk very slowly or you can walk fast, it’s up to you, but take your steps mindfully.
As you breathe in, you practice arriving. You have arrived. Your destination is the here and now.
When I chew, I say, “I have arrived, I am home”
You have to eat like a free person. Don’t allow worries, thoughts, and plans to drag you away from the here and now.
I have arrived, I am home, In the here and in the now. I am solid, I am free, In the ultimate I dwell.
The address of my true home is clear: life, here and now.
Your true nature is the nature of nirvana.
Our ancestors are still alive in us,
and we can call upon them anytime we like.
The Buddha, Christ, the matriarchs and patriarchs are your spiritual ancestors, and they too exist in every cell of your body and your consciousness. So we don’t need to travel through time or space to get in touch with our spiritual and genetic ancestors. If we dwell in the present moment, we can touch them in the here and now through mindful
breathing and deep looking. It’s amazing how we can do so many wonderful things while sitting on our meditation cushions.
“Beginning anew” means being determined not to repeat the negative things we have done in the past. A new era begins when we commit ourselves to living in mindfulness. When we vow to ourselves, “I am determined not to behave as I did in the past,” transformation occurs immediately.
We have not practiced the true presence that allows us to soothe the suffering that is in us. We turn on the television, we pick up a novel, we make a phone call so we can escape from ourselves. We do this every day. We have to change this habit. We have to come back to ourselves so we can take care of the situation.
Your fear, your depression, your despair—that is the baby in you. It is yourself.
Developing true presence has two purposes. The first is to make contact with everything that is beautiful, refreshing, and healing. We need that—we need the nourishment of a gorgeous sunset, a child’s smile, the song of a bird, the company of a friend. All of these things are precious, and we should be there to touch them. This is the first thing that mindfulness lets us do.
I am convinced that happiness is not possible unless it is based on freedom. If you are a free woman, if you are a free man,
you will enjoy happiness. But if you are a slave, even if only the slave of an idea, happiness will be very difficult for you to achieve. That is why you should cultivate freedom, including freedom from your own concepts and ideas. Let go of your ideas, even if abandoning them is not easy.
A happy person is an important thing, because their happiness spreads all around them. You can be a happy person too and become a refuge for all the beings around you.
The Buddha said, “When conditions are sufficient, the thing manifests, and when they are not sufficient, the thing remains hidden.” There is neither birth nor death. There is only manifestation, appearance. Concepts like birth and death, being and nonbeing, are not applicable to reality.
The word suchness describes reality as it is. Concepts and ideas are incapable of expressing reality as it is. Nirvana, the ultimate reality, cannot be described, because it is free of all concepts and ideas. Nirvana is the extinction of all concepts. It is total freedom.
Most of our suffering arises from our ideas and concepts. If you are able to free yourself from these concepts, anxiety and fear will disappear. Nirvana, the ultimate reality, or God, is of the nature of no-birth and no-death. It is total freedom. We need to touch this reality to leave behind the fear connected with the idea of birth and death.
a flower cannot “be” by itself alone. The flower cannot be. It can only inter-be.
We must go back to what the Buddha said—“This is, because that is”—and train ourselves to look at things in the light of interdependence. We can see the entire universe in a flower. We can see not only the entire universe, but also all our ancestors and our children in every cell of our own body.
The true declaration of love is, “Dear one, I am here for you,” because the most precious gift you can give to your loved one is your true presence, with body and mind united in solidity and freedom.
practice a second mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are here, alive, and that makes me very happy.” This mantra enables you to recognize the presence of the other person as something very precious, a miracle. It is the mantra of deep appreciation for his or her presence.
the person you love is suffering, you can say a third mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are suffering. That’s why I am here for you.”
As a bodhisattva, you can approach such a person, and with the miracle of the mantra you can open the door of his or her heart to the world and to the love that is always happening. “Dear one, I know that you are suffering a lot. I know this, and I am here for you, just as the trees are here for you and the flowers are here for you.” The suffering is there, but something else is also there: the miracle of life. With this mantra, you will help them to realize this and open the door of their closed heart.
In true love, there is no place for pride. I beg you to remember this.
Feelings of isolation and alienation come from a way of life that is too individualistic.
You have made mistakes; the other person has also made mistakes; and you need each other to let go of your false perceptions. Suffering and pain are born from wrong perceptions.
Getting rid of the concept of self is the work of all meditators,
An authentic Buddhist teaching must bear the mark of impermanence.
The person you have lost is still here. If you have the Buddha eye, you will see him. He is in the dimension known as the ultimate—he is smiling at you, and you should return his smile.
You are a manifestation. You are impermanent. Yet you are full of all the elements of the cosmos. You are a miracle. You are already what you are seeking to become. When you have this insight, you can stop. Stopping is peace. Stopping is happiness. Buddhist meditation consists of stopping and looking deeply, samatha and vipasyana. Deep looking helps you to stop, and stopping helps you to look deeply. Those two help each other. In order to look, you have to stop, and when you are looking deeply, you are stoping.
When you look at orange blossoms, you do not see oranges. But if you are a meditator, you see the oranges right away.
