Meeting each moment without resistance, we discover unsuspected beauty in our hearts, minds, and bodies and in the world around us. We perceive the movement of nature within us. We feel sad without needing to justify or eliminate the emotion. We feel happy without needing to believe that we will never again know sadness. This is the way of meditation.
Gavin Harrison, In the Lap of the Buddha
Listening to your own heart is really very interesting. This untrained heart races around following its own habits. It jumps about excitedly, randomly, because it has never been trained. Train your heart!…Meditation is about the heart; it’s about developing the heart or mind, about developing your own heart. This is very, very important.
Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart
The awareness of the so-called outward and the inward movement of life is meditation. The simultaneous awareness of the total movement is meditation. If I am aware of the nature of my reactions, and movement of my reactions, naturally that awareness will result in freedom from the reaction. I cannot stop the reaction, because the reactions have been rooted in the subconscious, in the unconscious. I cannot prevent, I cannot renounce, I cannot check them. But if I am aware, simultaneously of the objective challenge, the subjective reactions and the causes of these reactions, then it results in freedom. Then the momentum of reaction will not carry me over with it, but I will be ahead of the reactions. I will not be a victim of my reactions, but I will see them as I see the objective challenge. That for me is meditation. All inclusive attention while moving in life.
Vimala Thakar, Mutation of Mind
Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no “performance”. There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness and equanimity right here and right now.
Jon Kabat Zinn
The symbol for compassion is one moon shining in the sky while its image is reflected in one hundred bowls of water. The moon does not demand, “If you open to me, I will do you a favor and shine on you.” The moon just shines. The point is not to want to benefit anyone or make them happy. There is no audience involved, no “me” and “them.” It is a matter of an open gift, complete generosity without the relative notions of giving and receiving. That is the basic openness of compassion: opening without demand. Simply be what you are. Be the master of the situation. If you will just “be,” then life flows around and through you.
Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
Lao Tzu
