Don't Take Your Life Personally Quotes

“The point is, the Four Stages are not for ego-development or attainment; they are a skilful means for recognizing the way we cling to things.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“In terms of emotional habits, when somebody insults me or does something I find offensive, I feel anger, and then maybe think, ‘How could he do that? That’s disgusting! He was supposed to be my friend but he’s betrayed me, he’s disappointed me, I’ll never forgive him! No, I’m not even going to speak to him again ― but I’m going to confront him! I’m going to seek revenge!’ and I can go on and on like that. Then the rational mind says, ‘Oh, just forget it! He’s trying his best,’ and there is a feeling of magnanimity, a grand gesture of understanding. But you can’t sustain that for long before it goes back into, ‘How could he? I’ll never forgive him.’ And there is a struggle between the magnanimous, generous ‘Forgive! He’s just doing the best he can. Don’t make it personal. We all have our bad days . . .’ and ‘I’LL NEVER FORGIVE HIM!’ At least this is how my mind works. I have heard all the good advice, but the hurt, the pain of disappointment, the sense of betrayal is still there. So I contemplate these things. And then in this emptiness or this ‘sound of silence’, the thinking process stops.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“One begins to realize that liberation is through letting go, through allowing life to flow, through openness and attention. 1 August 2001”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“On a personal level ― getting back to praise and blame ― I like praise and I don’t like blame. When the personality becomes the subject, I am a victim of praise and blame; I have to constantly demand praise and run away from situations in which I might be criticized or blamed. One can see how easy it is to develop a way of life which concentrates on protecting oneself as a person, on just trying to be with people that give one the necessary you’re-a-nice-guy-I-really-like-you kind of feeling, avoiding the critics and only doing those things that one knows will be successful.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“Now, because Westerners are usually well educated, they often understand the theory quite easily ― this is just how I see it, anyway; this is what I am reflecting on these days ― but they don’t have any confidence in direct insight. They might have direct insight, but still their ego-structure is based on doubting themselves. So they either exaggerate direct insight by saying, ‘I’m enlightened!’ and think that that is a kind of permanent state of the ego, an enlightened ego, or they think, ‘Oh, it was just one of those strange things that happened.’ Or, if the ego suddenly drops away because they are in a very peaceful situation and they experience emptiness, they think it is the result of those conditions, those circumstances”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“People can have strong emotional reactions when their meditation gets towards the cessation of the ego. Panic and terror often become quite strong at those times. One can feel as though one is dying ― that is the message you can get from the conditioning  of the mind.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“The terrifying part in meditation is when the ego is being threatened. At first there might be a lot of interest in ‘solving my problems so that I can attain nibbana, be free from suffering and be free from all the problems of my life’, but I found that as all that began to resolve itself, there was quite a lot of myself, my ego, that I really liked. And the thought of not being anything, of extinction, of cessation of the ego ― the ego that is based on becoming something, on reinforcing itself ― was very threatening.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“If you are out on the wheel, you are caught on the dizzying momentum of going round in circles. We call it ‘samsara’ ― ‘samsara-vatta’ means ‘going round in circles’ — endless cycles, not really going anywhere but round. That is why when you do things from ignorance, you find yourself coming back and repeating the same things over and over again.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“So what does one do if one’s refuge is in another person? or in an institution? or in a way of thinking? or in family life? or in a political view? or in anything which is subject to change, to birth and death?”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“I was brought up in the States where your whole life was about attaining something.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“Our idealism tends to make us unhappy with the way things are, doesn’t it? We always think there is something wrong when we have the attitude that things should be like the ideal.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“During this Summer School, I encourage you to investigate what this personality belief is. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it ― there is nothing wrong with having a personality or an ego; it isn’t a matter of trying to get rid of it so you don’t have a personality or anything ― it is rather a matter of recognizing personality belief and realizing that it is a creation that comes and goes and changes according to conditions. You will then no longer be enslaved by the personality, by conditioning  and memories, and begin to free yourself from those kinds of limitations. If you see yourself always in that personal way, you will be bound into limited states that will cause suffering for you in your life. So, once you see the suffering of grasping the idea of ‘self’, you can let it go. That doesn’t mean the personality dissolves into nothing; it simply means that it changes according to its nature and that you are no longer ‘a person’. You then let the personality appear and disappear without binding yourself to it.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“Notice that this reflective paradigm of the statement, the prescription, and the result are the three aspects of each noble truth. The first Noble Truth is ‘understanding’, the second is ‘letting go of the causes’, the third is ‘realizing cessation’, and the fourth is ‘cultivating awareness in the ordinariness of life’.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“It is not a matter of controlling conditioned phenomena in order to realize cessation, but of trusting awareness to the point where it is the refuge. And it isn’t just a fragmentary refuge, just a flash of insight that you forget; you recognize the continuity of it. Otherwise you have moments of insight ― rather like flashes ― but then you are right back into the old habit-tendencies again. This is where you might feel despair with your practice; you understand the idea, but the reality evades you.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“As a student I learnt how to manipulate the university system. I figured out what I was good at and how I could get through. So I became manipulating and controlling. The point is, no matter how successful you are in getting what you want, it still leaves this sense of lack, of fear, of anxiety, in your consciousness. Even a peak moment, one realizes, cannot be sustained. A sense of despair arises after a peak experience because you have had it and it becomes a memory. Then the downhill slide can be quite depressing ― when taken personally. But one can get outside the personal by putting the creations you have into an objective perspective; you see them as ‘objects’. And you do this by means of awareness. That is the only way you can do it. Then you have consciousness and awareness together.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“What I am talking about is more a sense of relaxing, opening, receiving, than trying to attain. Pure consciousness is not an attainment; you can’t get it; you can only be it. Recognize ‘it is like this’. It is natural and being at ease. You feel relaxed and at home here. All the problems of being a separate person, a personality, drop away here. So, as you begin to explore and investigate this, you will find the way out of suffering.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“We are brought up to proclaim ourselves as individuals in such an extreme way that often we don’t feel any connection to anything at all, not even to our own parents or families.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally

“Notice the word ‘noble’ in noble truth. This is a truth to be realized. We are not told to grasp or believe this truth; it isn’t a belief; it isn’t a dogma; it isn’t a metaphysical truth; it isn’t the ultimate reality. It is a very common human experience of loss, identifying with that which is unsatisfactory, with change, with the delusions we create, and the expectations and assumptions we make about our lives.”
― Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally