Reflections on a Mountain Lake Quotes

“We are each living in our own soap opera. We do not see things as they really are. We see only our interpretations. This is because our minds are always so busy...But when the mind calms down, it becomes clear. This mental clarity enables us to see things as they really are, instead of projecting our commentary on everything.”
― Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“There appears to have been institutionalized bias against women right from the earliest times. I don’t think anybody sat down and thought, “Oh, let us be biased.” It’s just that it was part of the prevailing social scene. As the years passed, everything was recited and recorded from the male point of view. I am sure this was not intentional, it was just how it happened. Because most of the texts and the commentaries were written from the male point of view—that is, by monks—women increasingly began to be seen as dangerous and threatening. For example, when the Buddha talked about desire, he gave a meditation on the thirty-two parts of the body. You start with the hair on the top of the head and then go all the way down to the soles of the feet, imagining what you would find underneath if you took the skin off each part; the kidneys, the heart, the guts, the blood, the lymph and all that sort of thing. The practitioner dissects his body in order to cut through the enormous attachment to physical form and see it as it really is. Of course, in losing attachment to our own bodies, we also lose attachment to the bodies of others. But nonetheless, the meditation that the Buddha taught was primarily directed towards oneself. It was designed to cut off attachment to one’s own physical form and to achieve a measure of detachment from it; to break through any preoccupation the meditator might have about the attractiveness of his own body. However, when we look at what was being taught later, in the writings of Nagarjuna in the first century, or Shantideva in the seventh, we see that this same meditation is directed outwards, towards the bodies of women. It is the woman one sees as a bag of guts, lungs, kidneys, and blood. It is the woman who is impure and disgusting. There is no mention of the impurity of the monk who is meditating. This change occurred because this tradition of meditation was carried on by much less enlightened minds than that of the Buddha. So instead of just using the visualization as a meditation to break through attachment to the physical, it was used as a way of keeping the monks celibate. It was no longer simply a means of seeing things as they really are, but instead, as a means of cultivating aversion towards women. Instead of monks saying to themselves, “Women are impure and so am I and so are all the other monks around me,” it developed into “Women are impure.” As a consequence, women began to be viewed as a danger to monks, and this developed into a kind of monastic misogynism. Obviously, if women had written these texts, there would have been a very different perspective. But women did not write the texts. Even if they had been able to write some works from the female point of view, these still would have been imbued with the flavor and ideas of the texts and teachings designed for males. As a result of this pronounced bias, an imbalance developed in the teachings.”
― Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“The essence of meditation is to induce a mind which is totally relaxed and at the same time totally aware. If you get into a lovely, dreamy, peaceful state where you don't want to move and you feel you could just sit for hours, completely blissed out and peaceful, but in a vague fog, you have gone completely astray.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“If we don't use our daily life as a practice, nothing is ever going to change. It's not enough to just go to Dharma centers, or even to just do a daily practice. It's not even a matter of how much intellectual knowledge we absorb or how cleverly we understand concepts and ideas. The question is whether something inside is really changing. Is our mind being illuminated by these practices? Is our heart really opening? Are we kinder people? Are we more considerate? Are we feeling real compassion from the heart? If the answer to these questions is "No", we are merely indulging in intellectual play.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“Having this inner space enables us to view our thoughts and emotions at a distance, which means we do not immediately identify with them as they arise. Normally we identify so strongly with our thoughts and emotions. Because we identify with them, we make them opaque, heavy, solid, real...we create space and a sense of detachment that helps us recognize who we are and what our true nature is. This makes our everyday life much more pleasant because we have a quiet, calm center in which to take refuge.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“So if we are feeling angry at someone, we sit and generate thoughts of loving-kindness towards him. We start by generating thoughts of loving-kindness towards ourselves. Then when that warmth, that sense of acceptance even of the anger, arises in the heart, you can give it out to others. Another way, depending on what kind of meditation we are doing, is to look at the anger itself. First you quiet the mind. Then you look at the anger to see what it feels like. Where is it? What is the physical reaction to it? What is anger? When we say "1 am angry," what does it mean? How does it feel? That's one way. Another way is to replay what made us angry and observe it from a distance, the way we would watch a movie. Then try to see whether we can replay that scenario in a different way.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“That's why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance. If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet.... If we lose this moment because we are thinking about something else, we've lost it forever.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

“He is talking to the person, not to the various masks they are wearing for the world.”
― Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism