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A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet.
If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are.
Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.
Perhaps we will experience what is traditionally described as the fruition of maitri—playfulness.
As Suzuki Roshi says in his talk, that’s exactly the point: because we find ourselves to be the worst horse, we are inspired to try harder.
IN MEDITATION AND IN OUR DAILY LIVES THERE ARE three qualities that we can nurture, cultivate, and bring out. We already possess these, but they can be ripened: precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go.
Instead, there’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves,
Ummm. The worst horse?!
Whatever you’re given can wake you up or put you to sleep.
There isn’t any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.
“As soon as you begin to believe in something, then you can no longer see anything else.” The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn’t mean that beliefs or ideas or thinking is a problem; the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and thoughts, all these cause the problems.
“When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha” means that when you see that you’re grasping or clinging to anything, whether conventionally it’s called good or bad, make friends
We don’t even have to call it suffering anymore, we don’t even have to call it discomfort. It’s simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth. Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
The first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We do that, and there’s no reason to resist it. If we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.
began to recognize the opportunity of experiencing the realness of the four elements, feeling what it’s like to be weather. Of course that didn’t make the discomfort go away, but it removed the resistance, and somehow the world was there again.
the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and the discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather—the quality and the energy of the weather itself.
“continually resting,”
instruction for continuously resting is to train yourself not to be distracted by every little thing, but to stay with the breath.
“naively resting,”
“thoroughly resting.”
“taming the mind.”
“pacifying,”
“Thoroughly pacifying,”
Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara* is full of shit.” Renunciation is realizing that our nostalgia for wanting to stay in a protected, limited, petty world is insane.
Life is a whole journey of meeting your edge again and again. That’s where you’re challenged; that’s where, if you’re a person who wants to live, you start to ask yourself questions like, “Now, why am I so scared? What is it that I don’t want to see? Why can’t I go any further than this?”
In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation
of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart,
I had secretly hoped that if I did the practice I wouldn’t have to feel any pain anymore. When you do tonglen, you invite the pain
We who are living in the lap of luxury with our pitiful little psychological problems have a tremendous responsibility to let our clarity and our heart, our warmth, and our ability ripen, to open up and let go, because it’s so contagious.
The warrior realizes that the dragon is nothing but unfinished business presenting itself, and that it’s fear that really needs to be worked with.
Basically what we work with is our fear and our holding back, which are not necessarily obstacles. The only obstacle is ignorance, this refusal to look at our unfinished business.
You have a certain life, and whatever life you’re in is a vehicle for waking up.
“The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and all people. A complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and to all people, experiencing everything totally without reservations or blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.”
What I’m saying here is that ego can use anything to re-create itself, whether it’s occurrence or spaciousness, whether it’s what we call samsara or what we call nirvana.
sadness), if you can be willing to feel fully and acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it, because you also remember the vision and power of the Great Eastern Sun, you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality.
Rinpoche say that shopping is actually always trying to find security, always trying to feel good about yourself. When one sticks to one boat, whatever that boat may be, then one actually begins the warrior’s journey.
“Stop shopping around and settle down and go deeply into one body of truth.”
me, “Whatever you do, don’t try to make those feelings go away.” His advice went on: “Anything you can learn about working with your sense of discouragement or your sense of fear or your sense of bewilderment or your sense of feeling inferior or your sense of resentment—anything you can do to work with those things—do it, please, because it will be such an inspiration to other people.”
That’s how karma works. If you keep lying there, you’ll drown, but you don’t even have the privilege of dying. You just live with the sense of drowning all the time. So
