Being Upright Quotes

“To come back, to just be the way you are, including all your delusions, is to take refuge in buddha. When you take refuge, you are not trying to be something else. If you are a person who is trying to attain something, then in the act of taking refuge you don’t try to be somebody who is not trying to attain something. If you’re someone who is not trying to attain something, then you don’t try to become someone who is trying to attain something. You work with what you are. Taking refuge in buddha means trusting that you are buddha. Trusting”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts

“You don’t have to work at what you are. Part of what you are is what you think you are, but what you think you are is not all of what you are. It is just an aspect of what you are. Being buddha means being unattached to your thoughts about what you are. If you think you are a worthy person or an unworthy person, not grasping those thoughts is buddha.”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts

“You don’t have to say anything in particular or do anything in particular to be helpful to people. You become a bodhisattva by wishing for your own happiness as well as the happiness of others, and by opening to your own experience in a loving way. When you love yourself and are kind enough to yourself to be who you really are, you’re showing others what they need to do in order to be free.”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts

“Every manifestation of your body and mind is life.”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts

“At the conventional level, the precept of no intoxicants is understood as encouraging us to control our behavior by not using addictive substances to manipulate our state of being. Ironically, using individual effort to try to control our behavior is itself a violation of the ultimate meaning of the precept, because it is akin to manipulating our experience.”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts