To a disciple who begged for wisdom the Master said,
“Try this out: Close your eyes and see yourself and every living being thrown off the top of a precipice.
Each time you cling to something to stop yourself from falling understand that that is falling too.”
The disciple tried it out and never was the same again.
Anthony de Mello, sj., One Minute Wisdom
“I’m never free of fear,” some people say, implying that there should be a state of mind and body that is free of fear.
How can we possibly be free from fear when we live in the conditioned mode of the me-story most of the time? We’re deeply programmed to believe in this separate me by inaccurate language and by growing up in a world of other mes, all of whom think of and experience themselves as separate entities. . . . With separation inevitably goes fear and pain.
Toni Packer, Touching Fear
It’s easy to identify with all the places we have been hurt or abandoned,
but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every condition?
If we can’t, we may spend this life protecting ourselves
and never risk really living
Bonnie Myotai Treace Sensei
It’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your hell. “I expected you to be…” When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought, exmine your thinking, not just the thing that frustrates you. And you will see that a lot of your suffering is caused by your models about how the Universe ought to be. And your inability to allow it to be.
It’s like you come here and it’s a beautiful day, so you expect the next day is going to be beautiful. Then it rains, and you are disappointed. Isn’t it funny that when it rains, you should be disappointed? To take nature and allow nature, when it’s in its natural state, to make you miserable. It says something about you.
Ram Dass
Generally, ordinary thinking involves running between that and this.
You are reporting back to yourself all the time.
You do not just think; you think and then report back.
However, when this back and forth petty journey is not happening, there is a transcendental sort of thinking, so to speak. With this kind of thinking, you are seeing things precisely as they are, rather than having to refer back to anyone, because the whole being is seeing.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Milarepa, Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi
It never ceases to amaze me:
we all love ourselves more than other people,
but care more about their opinion than our own
Marcus Aurelius
Mindfulbalance 