WHEN WE TALK ABOUT gaining the perfect wisdom of a buddha, we should not think that we need to create qualities in ourselves that are not there already, and aquire them from somewhere outside of us. Rather, we should see perfect buddha wisdom as a potential that is being realized. The defilements of the mind hamper the natural expression of that potential which is inherent in consciousness. It is as if the capacity for unobstructed knowledge is there in our mind, but the defilements obscure and hinder it from being fully developed and expressed.
-- H.H. The Dalai Lama
from "The Four Noble Truths" (Thorsons 1977)
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THERE IS NO SITUATION that cannot be ennobled by achievement or enduring.
-- Goethe
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OUR GREATEST GLORY is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-- Confucius
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YOU CANNOT PREVENT the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.
-- Swedish proverb
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DEATH IS REAL,
comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.
-- One of the 'Four Reminders'
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YOU WILL LIVE or you will die.
Both are good.
-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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NEVER FORGET HOW SWIFTLY this life will be over, like a flash of summer lightning or the wave of a hand. Now that you have the opportunity to practice dharma, do not waste a single moment on anything else.
-- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from Tricycle, Fall 1997
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THERE IS A WAY between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes.
-- Rumi
from "The Essential Rumi"
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
(Harper SanFrancisco, 1995)
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ALTHOUGH THE WORLD is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
-- Helen Keller
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YOU WANT TO KNOW how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair
-- Elie Wiesel
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BROKEN AND BROKEN
again on the sea, the moon
so easily mends
-- Chosu
IT IS POSSIBLE THROUGH MEDITATION to find shelter from much of the wind that agitates the mind. Over time, a good deal of the turbulence may die down from a lack of continuous feeding. But ultimately the winds of life and of the mind will blow, do what we may. Meditation is about knowing something about this and how to work with it.
The spirit of mindfulness practice was nicely captured in a poster of a seventy-ish yogi, Swami Satchitanananda, in full white beard and flowing robes atop a surfboard riding the waves off a Hawaiian beach. The caption read: "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf."
Jon Kabat-Zin
p. 31-32 from "Wherever You Go, There You Are"
Hyperion, 1994
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YOU MUST KNOW FOR YOURSELF, directly, the truth of yourself and you cannot realize it through another, however great. There is no authority that can reveal it.
-- J. Krishnamurti
from "Authentic Report of Sixteen Talks,"
page 85, given in 1945-46
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BY BEING WITH YOURSELF ... By watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies., This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
from "I Am That," quoted in
"Wherever You Go, There You Are"
by Jon Kabat-Zin
