Tag: Meditation

Seeing the different people

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There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you’s” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less like a single mind and more like an unruly throng of people: lots of different voices, with lots of different opinions about what you should do. Some members of the committee are open and honest about the assumptions underlying their central desires. Others are more obscure and devious. This is because each committee member is like a politician, with its own supporters and strategies for satisfying their desires. One of the purposes of meditation is to bring these dealings out into the open, so that you can bring more order to the committee — so that your desires for happiness work less at cross purposes, and more in harmony as you realize that they don’t always have to be in conflict.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Training the mind

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Nothing in the whole universe is comparable to the mind or can take its place. Everything is mind-made. Yet we all take our minds for granted, which is another absurdity. No one takes the body for granted. When the body gets sick, we quickly run to the doctor. When the body gets hungry, we quickly feed it. When the body gets tired, we quickly rest it. But what about the mind? Only the meditator looks after the mind. Looking after the mind is essential if life is to grow in depth and vision. Otherwise life stays two-dimensional. Most lives are lived in the realities of yesterday and tomorrow, good and bad, “I like it” and “I don’t like it,” “I’ll have it” and “I won’t have it,” “this is mine and this is yours.” Only when the mind is trained can we see other dimensions.

Ayya Khema, Being Nothing,  Going Nowhere

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Sunday Quote: Every day as something new

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earlz morning menton

Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior

that every single day he made a fresh beginning.

Abba Poemen (c. 340–450) was an Egyptian monk and one of the early Desert Fathers

Hold everything lightly

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From the beginning
the flying birds have left
no footprints on the blue sky
Musō Soseki, Zen Buddhist Monk, calligraphy artist, poem writer, and garden designer,  1275 – 1351
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….Not taking things personally

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In fully allowing conditions to be what they are, we stabilize our hearts and find peace. It’s like putting a boat into water. We make an ark of truth: ‘the conditions are like this,’ and in that truth, we  don’t adopt the conditions as our own. This is important: you can’t drain the sea, but you don’t have to drown.

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami

photo pmalkowski

 …

The basic choice….

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When I was about six years old I received an essential …. teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved, and mad, kicking anything I could find. Laughing, she said to me, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.” Right there, I received this pith instruction: We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have the choice.

Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare you

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