More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Four Immeasurable Minds are the four elements of true love: maitri — loving kindness (the desire to offer happiness); karuna — compassion (the desire to remove suffering from the other person); mudita — joy (the desire to bring joy to people around you, and allowing their happiness to bring you joy); and upeksha, equanimity (the desire to accept everything and not to discriminate).
Without understanding, love can’t be true love.
We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the ones we love.
Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be of much help to others.
According to the Buddha, a human being is made of five elements, called skandhas in Sanskrit. These skandhas are: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. In a way, we are the surveyor and these elements are our territory. To know the real situation within ourselves, we have to survey our own territory thoroughly, including the elements within us that are at war with each other. To bring about harmony, reconciliation, and healing within, we have to understand ourselves. Looking and listening deeply, surveying our territory, is the beginning of love meditation. We
...more
We have to know which wrong perceptions cause us to suffer.
According to Buddhism, consciousness is like a field with every possible kind of seed in it: seeds of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity; seeds of anger, fear, and anxiety; and seeds of mindfulness. Consciousness is the storehouse that contains all these seeds, all the possibilities of what might arise in our mind. When our mind is not at peace, it may be because of the desires and feelings in our store consciousness. To live in peace, we have to be aware of our tendencies — our habit energies — so we can exercise some self-control.
“People usually think they love themselves. But because they are not mindful, they say and do things that create their own suffering.”16 When we see that this is true, we will stop blaming others as the cause of our suffering. Instead, we will try to love and care for ourselves and nourish our own body and mind.
When you practice, observe how much peace, happiness, and lightness you already have. Notice whether you are anxious about accidents or misfortunes, and how much anger, irritation, fear, anxiety, or worry are already in you. As you become aware of the feelings in you, your self-understanding will deepen. You will see how your fears and lack of peace contribute to your unhappiness, and you will see the value of loving yourself and cultivating a heart of compassion.
Again, we begin with ourselves, to understand our own true nature. As long as we reject ourselves, as long as we continue to harm our own body and mind, there is no point in talking about loving and accepting others.
The practice is to shed the light of mindfulness on our habitual thought patterns so we can see them clearly. When a thought or idea arises, we recognize it and smile to it. That may be enough to make it cease. Appropriate mental attention (yoniso manaskara) brings us happiness, peace, clarity, and love. Inappropriate attention (ayoniso manaskara)
Whenever we hear a conversation or witness an event, our attention can be appropriate or inappropriate. If we are mindful, we will recognize which it is, nurture appropriate attention, and release inappropriate attention, noting, “I am aware that this inappropriate attention will
When we know how to maintain a calm, joyful mind, our words and actions will manifest peace and happiness.
To have a deep and direct understanding of another person, you must become one with him or her. As long as you see yourself as separate from the object, your understanding is not yet true.
“To identify” means to recognize the presence of something. “To see the sources” means to understand its nature — where it came from, what circumstances made it arise, and how long it has been there. This is a process of deep looking. There are poisons inside us, including craving, anger, and delusion. Craving is the greed that makes us chase after fame, advantage, wealth,
When anger rises, return to yourself and use the energy of mindfulness to embrace, soothe, and illuminate it. Do not think you will feel better if you can make the other person suffer, too. This is a dangerous way of thinking. In their anger, the other person might respond even more
Don’t be angry at your anger. Don’t try to chase it away or suppress it. Acknowledge that it has arisen and take care of it.
“Breathing in, I calm the activities of the mind in me.” “Activities of the mind” refers to any emotional or psychological state, such as anger, sadness, jealousy, or fear. As you breathe in and out mindfully, you embrace and calm that mental state.
It is important to look deeply into the suffering of others. Someone whose actions are unkind, whose thoughts are unwholesome, whose speech is unwholesome is certainly suffering a lot.
meditation.” What is the nature of this joy? How can we touch true joy in every moment of our lives? How can we live in a way that brings a smile, the eyes of love, and happiness to everyone we encounter? Use your talent to find ways to bring happiness to yourself and others — the happiness that arises from meditation and not from the pursuit of fruitless pleasure-seeking. Meditative joy has the capacity to nourish our mindfulness, understanding, and love. Try to live in a way that encourages deep happiness in yourself and others. “I vow to bring joy to one person in the morning and to help
...more
The fourth important subject in the sutra concerns the trap of complexes — thinking you are better, worse than, or equal to others. All of these complexes arise because we think we’re a separate self. Happiness built on the notion of a separate self is weak and unreliable. Through the practice of meditation, we come to see that we “inter-are” with all other beings, and our fears, anxieties, anger, and sorrow disappear. If you practice true happiness, relying on the Dharma and realizing the interconnected and interdependent nature
Happiness is not an individual matter; it has the nature of interbeing. When you are able to make one friend smile, her happiness will nourish you also. When you find ways to peace, joy, and happiness, you do it for everyone. Begin by nourishing yourself with joyful feelings.
Once you have looked deeply into that person and understood his deepest needs, he will no longer be a neutral person. Finally, make a person you hate the object of your meditation.
Every morning, you rededicate yourself to your path in order not to go astray. Before going to sleep at night, you take a few minutes to review the day. “Did I live in the direction of my ideals today?” If you see that you took two or three steps in that direction, that is good enough. If you did not, say to yourself, “I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not be indifferent.” When we are indifferent, nothing is
Without mindfulness, attachment will surely become aversion. When love is still new, we think that life without our beloved would be intolerable. But when attachment becomes aversion, life with our beloved is intolerable, and divorce seems to be the only option. The poles of attachment and aversion both lead to suffering.
The problem is to look deeply at the nature of your loving to identify the negative elements of attachment and possessiveness in it and to see how your way of looking, loving, speaking, and acting have to change so that true love, compassion, joy, and equanimity can enter. When you practice in this way, your positive qualities will slowly increase.
True love contains respect.
you really love someone, you have to be fully present for him or
We are seldom there for ourselves. We run away from ourselves, because we are afraid to go home and face the fear and suffering in our wounded child who has been ignored for such a long time. But it is wonderful to return home and say, “Little boy or little girl, I am here for you. Don’t worry. I will take care of you.” This is the first step. You are the deeply wounded child waiting for you to come home. And you are the one
We only need to choose our words carefully and we can make other people very happy. The way we speak and listen can offer others joy, happiness, self-confidence, hope, trust, and enlightenment.
In the Buddhist tradition, Right Speech is described as refraining from these four actions: (1) Not telling the truth. If it’s black, you say it’s white. (2) Exaggerating. You make something up, or describe something as more beautiful than it actually is, or as ugly when it is not so ugly. (3) Forked tongue. You go to one person and say one thing and then you go to another and say the opposite. (4) Filthy language. You insult or abuse people.
Mindfulness can help us to restore communication, first of all within ourselves.
Unless we practice deep listening and loving speech, we cannot communicate with people.
If you are motivated by some desire, that is not love. Desire is not love. Love is something much more responsible. It has care in
People need to hear how we have to be able to overcome our own suffering and the irritations in our own heart. When we talk about the Dharma, our words need to have energy.
We can only teach what we have experienced ourselves.
Beginning Anew is to change your mind and heart, to transform the ignorance that brought about wrong actions of body, speech, and mind, and to help you cultivate your mind of love.
For us to become strong and free enough to get free or to help others, we need a loving heart, clear understanding, and great inner strength.
You may think that happiness is possible only in the future, but if you learn to stop running, you will see that there are more than enough conditions for you to be happy right now. The only moment for us to be alive in is the present moment. The past is already gone and the future is not yet here. Only in the present moment can we touch life and be deeply alive. Our true home is in the here and the now.
We cannot practice deep looking unless we stop running and begin to dwell in the present moment. We do not need to run into the future to have happiness.
There is suffering in the present moment, but there is also peace, stability, and freedom. With peace in our hearts, happiness is possible. Every kind of practice should offer us more peace, stability, and freedom. These are essential for our happiness.
Meditate in order to see the roots of anger and pain in each person you dislike. Understanding is the key to open the heart, so this meditation is very important.
We must practice love twenty-four hours a day. Less will not do. We must know how to become a person who dwells in love, compassion, joy, and equanimity every hour of every day.
