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If you want to create a more collegial, harmonious atmosphere in your workplace or community, don’t start by trying to change other people. Your first priority should be to find your own quiet space inside so you can learn more about yourself.
Walking is a wonderful way to clear the mind without trying to clear the mind. You don’t say, “Now I am going to practice meditation!” or “Now I am going to not think!” You just walk, and while you’re focusing on the walking, joy and awareness come naturally.
In that short amount of time you can experience the bliss, the joy, the happiness of stopping. During that time of stopping, your body is able to heal itself. Your mind also has the capacity to heal itself. There is nothing and no one to prevent you from continuing the joy you’ve produced with a second step, a second breath. Your steps and your breath are always there to help you heal yourself.
While walking, while lying down, while washing the dishes, while brushing your teeth, you can always practice offering yourself this wide and warm embrace of silence.
Silence doesn’t just mean not talking. Most of the noise we experience is the busy chatter inside our own head. We think and we rethink, around and around in circles. That’s why at the start of each meal, we should remind ourselves to eat only our food and not our thoughts.
Happiness arises as we become more aware of the many wonders available to us.
When our mind is racing and noisy, outward calm is only a pretense. But when we can find space and calm inside, then without effort we radiate peace and joy. We are able to help others and create a more healing environment around us, without uttering a single word.
By sitting quietly, stopping the activities of body and mind, and being silent within, you become more solid and concentrated, and your mind becomes clearer. Then it’s possible to be aware of what’s happening inside and around you.
Once we recognize the roots of an emotion or idea, we can begin to let it go.
Right thinking requires mindfulness and concentration. Say there’s a problem we need to solve. It will take us much longer to reach a good resolution if we apply wrong thinking to it. We need to give our mind consciousness a rest and allow store consciousness to look for a solution.
Our thinking mind, our mind consciousness, is not the soil; it is only the hand that plants the seeds and cultivates the soil by practicing mindfulness of each thing we are doing as we go about our day. Our store consciousness is the fertile soil that will help the seed to germinate.
When we release our ideas, thoughts, and concepts, we make space for our true mind. Our true mind is silent of all words and all notions, and is so much vaster than limited mental constructs. Only when the ocean is calm and quiet can we see the moon reflected in it.
Living from a place of silence doesn’t mean never talking, never engaging or doing things; it simply means that we are not disturbed inside; there isn’t constant internal chatter.
Realize that silence comes from your heart and not from the absence of talk.
Just as inner silence does not require outer silence, solitude does not necessarily have to mean there is no one physically around you.
When we know how to sit together, breathe together, connect with the spaciousness that’s always available inside of us, and generate the energy of peace and relaxation and joy, that collective energy of silence is very healing, very nourishing.
You can just hear a sound, and listen deeply, and enjoy that sound. There is peace and joy in your listening, and your silence is an empowered silence. That kind of silence is dynamic and constructive. It’s not the kind of silence that represses you.
There are those of us who make the choice to practice one or two weeks of silence, even three months of silence or more. After that much time in silence, we are able to transform our ways of responding to any number of situations. This silence is called noble because it has the power to heal.
Breathing mindfully and becoming aware of your responses to people and events around you is a deep practice.
When you are in touch with these refreshing and healing elements, you are being, and not thinking.
Perhaps you have heard of monks in Vietnam who immolated themselves during the war in the 1960s. That action had its root in this chapter of the Lotus Sutra. People who don’t consider this body to be themselves sometimes choose to use this body in order to get a message across.
This burning was a kind of offering. What Thich Quang Duc and Medicine King wanted to offer in the act of self-immolation was not just their body, but their strong determination to help other living beings.
When we eat, we’re often rushed; sometimes we don’t even take the time to sit down. If that’s true of you, please offer yourself the opportunity to eat mindfully as a human being, not a running robot. Before you eat, take a few moments to sit down, feel your weight supported by the chair (or the ground), quiet your thinking, and contemplate the food and its sources. The earth, the sun, the rain, labor, and many supportive conditions have come together so that your food could be brought to you. Be aware of how fortunate you are to have food to eat when so many people are hungry.
when we try to have a genuine conversation with someone, we find it difficult to hear and understand the other person. Silence allows for deep listening and mindful response, the keys to full and honest communication.
In order to practice right speech, we need to first take the time to look deeply into ourselves and into whoever is in front of us so that our words will be able to create mutual understanding and relieve the suffering on both sides.
When our words are spoken with compassion, based on love and on our awareness of our interconnectedness, then our speech may be called right speech.
First and foremost, if we haven’t listened deeply to ourselves, we can’t listen deeply to others.
People usually think that their ancestors have died, but that’s not correct. Because we are here, alive, our ancestors continue to be alive in us. Our ancestors have transmitted themselves to us, with their talents, their experiences, their happiness, their suffering. They are fully present in every cell of our body. Our mother, our father, they are in us. We cannot take them out.
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If we practice some time in silence each day, even if it’s just a few minutes, we are much less prone to getting caught in words. Comfortable with practicing silence, we are free as a bird, in touch with the profound essence of things.
Silence is the best foundation for looking deeply. Confucius said, “The heavens do not say anything.” Yet the heavens tell us so much if we know how to listen.
If we listen from the mind of silence, every birdsong and every whispering of the pine branches in the wind will speak to us.
If we truly want to communicate with our loved ones, we need to be aware of the nonverbal ways in which communication is taking place, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Without words coming from outside or words swirling inside your mind, you have the chance to truly listen to yourself for a few minutes each day.
The first mantra is “Darling, I am here for you.”
You can love only when you are here, when you are truly present.
The second mantra is “Darling, I know you are there, and I am very happy.” To love means to acknowledge the presence of the person you love.
unless you are 100 percent here, you can’t fully recognize another’s presence, and that person may not feel truly loved by you.
third mantra: “Darling, I know you suffer; that’s why I am here for you.” When people suffer, they want the person they love to be aware of their suffering—that’s
The fourth mantra, which you won’t need often (but is powerful when you do need it), is “Darling, I suffer; please help.”
You believe that your suffering comes from him or her, but are you really so sure? It’s possible that you’re wrong. Maybe he or she didn’t intend to hurt you. Maybe you’ve misunderstood or have a wrong perception.
In true love there is no room for pride.
If you pay attention as you breathe, it’s as though all the cells in your brain and in the rest of your body are singing the same song.
With the act of breathing in mindfully, you go inside. Your body is breathing; and your body is your home. In each breath, you can come home to yourself.
Your mindful breath is your home base. If you want to realize your aspirations; if you want to build connection with your family and friends; if you want to help your community—you need to begin with your breath.
mindful living is more a matter of reorienting yourself, of remembering your true intention, than of squeezing an additional event called “Meditation” into your daily agenda.
Take that moment, first thing, to follow your breathing in and out and be aware that you have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. This is a gift of life!
Waking up this morning I smile. Twenty-four brand-new hours are before me. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at everything around me with the eyes of compassion
You are determined not to waste your twenty-four hours, because you know that those twenty-four hours are a gift of life, and you receive that gift anew every morning.
People say “time is money.” But time is much more than money. Time is life.
Mindfulness can change your relationship to everything. It can help you be truly present and really enjoy whatever you are doing.
