When you are completely absorbed in your breathing there is no self. What is your breathing? That breathing is not you, nor air. What is it? It is not self at all. When there is no self you have absolute freedom. Because you have a silly idea of self you have a lot of problems. So I say your problems are homemade.
Suzuki Roshi, teaching June 1st, 1966
Weakness is at the heart of each one of us. Weakness becomes a place of chaos and confusion, if in our weakness we are not wanted; it becomes a place of peace and joy, if we are accepted, listened to, appreciated and loved.
Some people are infuriated by weakness. Weakness awakens hardness and anger in them. But to deny weakness as part of life is to deny death, because weakness speaks to us of the ultimate powerlessness, of death itself. To be small, to be sick, to be dying, are stages of powerless, they appear to us to be anti-life and so we deny them.
If we deny our weakness and the reality of death, if we want to be powerful and strong always, we deny part of our being, we live an illusion. To be human is to accept who we are, this mixture of strength and weakness.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human
As long as the mind is in conflict – blaming, resisting, condemning – there can be no understanding.
If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.
J. Krishnamurti.
When you check your own mind properly,
you stop blaming others for your problems
Lama Thubten Yeshe, Your mind is your religion
If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go.
Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5, v 16
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