As many teachers have pointed out, “the path is the goal”. That means that what we experience as “obstacles” along the way is usually just a sense of our own expectations falling apart. These same obstacles can be viewed differently, as the basis for reengaging our attention and working through whatever arises, whether it is a sense of purpose and satisfaction, or boredom and resistance, or a sense of futility. Work with whatever arises
Cyndi Lee, Yoga Body, Buddha Mind
photo prayitno
Mindfulness helps you fall in love with the ordinary
Thich Nhat Hahn
I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart.
We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, being sick, losing what is dear to us, life’s unsatisfactoriness – all are beyond our control.
I can either be frightened of life and mad at life – or not.
Sylvia Boorstein
photo mike shinners
[If] we truly want to progress on the path, we must regard our enemies as our best teachers. For whoever holds love and compassion in high esteem, the practice of tolerance is essential, and it requires an enemy. We must be grateful to our enemies, then, because they help us best engender a serene mind! Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the “enemies” who appear from time to time in our lives.
The Dalai Lama
The first condition [required] is peace and calm; without that, it’s very difficult to see anything. That’s why a lot of our practice is actually to bring the heart to a state of balance and calm. Most people are in a constant state of reactivity. But someone who has seen the suffering of reactivity calmly comes to realize that it’s not the best way to relate to life; it is very limited – always the experience of ‘Self’, ‘Me’ and ‘You’. But as the sense of ‘Self’ decreases, the reactivity decreases also. It’s not so much the sense of Self that is the obstacle, its our identification with it.
Ajahn Sundara, Simplicity
photo jeff chenqinyi
There are actually two reasons why people in general are out of touch with their subjective experiences: They have ‘low definition’ bodies and they are continuously fixated in thought, especially verbal thought. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with thinking. Indeed complex thought is evolution’s wonderful gift to humankind, giving our species special powers that the others lack. Thought per se is not the problem. The problem is the driven and fixated way in which we think.
Shinzen Young, Bringing the Monastery Home
