Tag: Awareness

Recognize this

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The mind is naturally spacious.

It can hold anything – joy, sorrow, fear, excitement—without being destroyed or overwhelmed. The trouble begins when we forget this capacity and start to believe that our thoughts and emotions are solid, permanent, or bigger than the mind itself. We contract around them, tightening our mental grip, as if holding on could somehow make life more secure. But the truth is, the mind is like the sky—vast, open, and inherently calm. Clouds (thoughts, worries, pleasures) pass through, but the sky remains unchanged.

Meditation is the practice of remembering this.…This spaciousness isn’t something we need to create; it’s already here. Our practice is to recognize it. When we do, life becomes lighter. Difficult emotions don’t disappear, but they no longer define us. 

Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

losing today

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The greatest obstacle to living fully is expectancy,

which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.

You are arranging what lies in the control of fortune and abandoning what lies in yours.


Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius Letter CI

Promised freedom

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One evening, I sat on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, watching the waves roll in. Each one rose, peaked, and dissolved back into the sea—countless waves, never the same, yet always the ocean. It struck me then: this is how life is. Our bodies, our thoughts, the world itself – all are like those waves, rising and passing in endless flux.

We often live as if we’re solid, permanent beings navigating a stable world. But the truth is closer to that ocean: a flow of changing conditions, with no fixed ‘self’ at the center.

The heart that understands impermanence becomes like the sky: things pass through it – joy, sorrow, gain, loss -but the sky isn’t harmed. This is the freedom the Buddha promised

Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain

Don’t add anything

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Choiceless awareness is pure observation without the observer.

When you look at a tree, a face, or your own reactions without naming, judging, or comparing, then there is no division between the observer and the observed – there is only seeing.

Jiddu Krisnamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Lemons

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Some people say that suffering is a fixed part of the mind, that it will be there forever.

I was talking to someone about this just today. I tried to explain that suffering is not intrinsic to the mind. It arises in the present moment.

Think about a lemon. If you leave it alone, is it sour? Where is the sourness then? It’s when the lemon contacts the tongue that sourness occurs. If you aren’t experiencing it, it’s as if it isn’t there. When there is contact with the tongue it arises at that moment. And from there arise dislike and afflictions. These tribulations are not intrinsic to the mind, but are momentary arisings.

Ajahn Chah, Being Dharma

continually fresh

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Every thought a present moment

In your practice it is important to make every thought a present moment. When you make every thought a present moment, there is no continuity of time, no carry over from moment to moment. Everything is continually fresh, like the water of a spring endlessly bubbling up into the open air. In this practice every moment is a rebirth.

Master Sheng Yen, Illuminating Silence