As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be,
You cannot see how it is
Ram Dass
No striving, no grasping at this or that, no entertaining any self-involved stories whatsoever.
Instead, attention pivots toward a light in the heart in which the ‘field of boundless emptiness’ is revealed.
All questions and doubts are put to rest.
Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091–1157, Chinese Chan Buddhist monk
We’re not trying to stand in the middle of something, and know that the situation will pass.
We’re trying to stand in the middle of it and know that our overwhelm will pass.
That’s what’s passing. The situation itself may take a long while, and we have to do some effort in it. But what we’re aimed at, as practitioners, is to first let our overwhelm pass, let it be, let it rise and fall as all emotions do.
Tuere Sala
If you can’t sleep, get up. Make tea. Pray. If you can’t pray, pray anyway. Light a candle. Kneel. Watch. If you can’t watch, watch anyway.
There are hares looking for food. And there are sleeping robins beyond the dark window. There are burrowing things burrowing.
There is this posture, this story, this practice, that – even if nothing else holds you – holds you.
Pádraig Ó Tuama, Irish poet, creater of the beautiful podcast Poetry Unbound
False views make up the world
true views are from the world beyond,
when true and false are both dismissed
your buddha nature will manifest
this is simply the straightforward teaching…
delusion lasts countless kalpas
awareness takes but an instant.
Huineng, 638 – 713, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” school of Buddhism
[a kalpa is a long period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thinking]