The subtle suffering in our lives may seem unimportant. But if we attend to the small ways that we suffer, we create a context of greater ease, peace, and responsibility, which can make it easier to deal with the bigger difficulties when they arise.
Gil Fronsdal, Living Two Traditions
The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts, we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed destiny. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless “I” that is all we know of ourselves.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Avoidance of discomfort is one of the most powerful drives in us, yet much of its power derives from the belief – the false belief – that we can’t be happy if we’re uncomfortable. One of the great benefits of practice is learning that this belief is not, in fact, an unalterable truth.
Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart
The reason why men are so anxious to see themselves,
instead of being content to be themselves,
is that they do not really believe in their own existence.
Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life
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Your body is your first home:
“Breathing in, I arrive in my body.
Breathing out, I am home.”
Thich Nhat Hahn
As you start the practice, you have a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of the breath is very important. The breath should not be forced, obviously; you are breathing naturally. The breath is going in and out, in and out. With each breath you become relaxed.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
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