The Issue at Hand Quotes

“The intentions to be kind, compassionate, helpful, happy, and liberated are among the most beautiful qualities we have as humans.”
― Gil Fronsdal, Issue at Hand

“We can in fact remove from our hearts the toxic forces of greed, hate, and delusion.”
― Gil Fronsdal, Issue at Hand

“He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise.”
― Gil Fronsdal, Issue at Hand

“Buddhist teachings suggest that when we find the thing that keeps us from appreciating the present, the thing that keeps us from trusting, the very thing that causes us suffering, it is a gate to freedom, to awakening.”
― Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice

“Hatred never ends through hatred.
By non-hatred alone does it end.
This is eternal truth. Victory gives birth to hate;
The defeated sleep tormented. Giving up both victory and defeat,
The peaceful sleep delighted. All tremble at violence:
All fear death. Having likened others to yourself,
Don’t kill or cause others to kill. If you surveyed the entire world
You’d find no one more dear than yourself. Since each person is most dear to themselves,
May those who love themselves not bring harm to anyone. The person who day and night
Delights in harmlessness, And has loving-kindness toward all beings,
Is the one who has no hate for anyone.”
― Gil Fronsdal, Issue at Hand

“And I have known meditators filled with doubt and self-condemnation when the practice has been stormy. Practicing with our best effort during periods of crisis and personal struggle may not bring about spiritual highs. It may, however, bring something more important: a strengthening of the inner qualities that sustain a spiritual life for the long term: mindfulness, persistence, courage, compassion, humility, renunciation, discipline, concentration, faith*, acceptance, and kindness.”
― Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice

“Many of us have hearts that are encrusted with anxieties, fears, aversions, sorrows, and an array of defensive armor. The non-reactive and accepting awareness of mindfulness will help to dissolve these crusts. The practice has a cyclic quality; it is self-reinforcing. At first, the practice will allow us to let go of a small amount of defensiveness. That release allows a corresponding amount of openness and tender- heartedness to show itself. This process encourages us to drop even more armor. Slowly, a greater sense of heartfeltness supports the further development of mindfulness.

As our neurotic thought patterns drop away, layers of judgment and resistance atrophy, and the need to define our selves through hard-held identities relaxes. As this happens, the natural goodness of the heart shines by itself.

The impulses to be aware, happy, compassionate, and free, all come from the goodness of our hearts. As we connect to these intentions and allow them to motivate our mindfulness practice, the practice becomes heartfelt.”
― Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice

“the tradition discourages attachments to any particular ideas of enlightenment as well as to pointless philosophical or metaphysical speculation.”
― Gil Fronsdal, Issue at Hand