Tag: Awareness

Sunday quote: No preference

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Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is.

Jiddu Krisnamurti

Interesting

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In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.

John Cage, quoted in Mark Epstein, Going on Being

Untroubled

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The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.

The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Sunday Quote: Miracle

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To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.

Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

All flows through us

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The sublime peace of the Tao [is] something we can all experience by . . . coming into accord with how things actually are—what Tibetan Buddhists call the natural state. Rather than trying to build skyscrapers to reach heaven and bridges to cross the raging river of samsara to reach the so-called other shore of nirvana, we could realize that it all flows right through us right now and there’s nowhere to go, nothing to get, and all is perfect as it is. This deep inner knowing has a lot to do with trust and letting be; there is nirvanic peace in things just as they are.

Lama Surya Das in Derek Lin, Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained 

Different channels

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Recently, one friend asked me, “How can I force myself to smile when I am filled with sorrow? It isn’t natural.” I told her she must be able to smile to her sorrow, because we are more than our sorrow. A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on then we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We can not let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to seize the situation in our hand, to recover our own sovereignty.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Smile