There is a Noble truth about the arising of suffering:
It arises with a thirst for more, that is …always running here and there.
That is, a thirst for sense-input, a thirst to be something, a thirst to not be something.
The Buddha, The Turning of the Wheel Sutta
Water is free from the birth
and death of a wave.
Thich Nhat Hahn
I gaze on myself in the stream’s emerald flow,
Sit on a boulder by a cliff.
My mind, a lonely cloud,
Leans on nothing, needs nothing
From the world and its endless events.
HanShan, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist poet
The invitation is to throw yourself into the dance,
whether the music is always of your choosing or not,
as if it were both an experiment and an adventure.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form
Thich Nhat Hanh
Dipa Ma taught that the mind is all stories, one after another, like nesting dolls. You open one, and another is inside. Open that one, and there is another story emerging. When you get to the last nesting doll, the smallest one, and open it, inside of it is – what? It’s empty, nothing there, and all around you are the empty shells of the stories of your life
Amy Schmidt, author, Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master
[Dipa Ma, 1911 – 1989 was an Indian meditation teacher of Theravada Buddhism, who had a big influence on early teachers in the Insight Meditation Society in Barre Massachusetts]
