If we are sincere about working on ourselves—decreasing our ego, anger, and other delusions, and increasing patience, love, and other positive qualities—then someone who arouses our anger is like a teacher, giving us a chance to learn that we still have a lot of work to do. Think of a time when difficulties with another person taught you important lessons. Resolve that when you again encounter problems with people, you will use these as opportunities for growth. It’s possible that you may end up feeling grateful for the difficult people in your life.
—Katherine McDonald (Sangye Khadro)
You can do this; you can face your life with a calm mind and burn the flame of your life in whatever you do. This is the Buddha’s practice. That’s why teachers always tell you to practice, devote yourself to doing something, and forget yourself. When you forget yourself and put your wholehearted effort into facing every moment, you can do something, and simultaneously you can rest in the continuous flow of life energy. Then you really enjoy your life.
—Dainin Katagiri
From Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time by Dainin Katagiri (Shambhala Publications, 2008).
Don’t meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself; rather, do it as an act of love, of deep warm friendship toward yourself. In this view, there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement, for self-criticism, for the endless guilt of not doing enough.
—Bob Sharples
From Meditation and Relaxation in Plain English by Bob Sharples (Wisdom Publications, 2006).
Sitting still is a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it.
—Pico Iyer
From The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer (Simon Schuster/TED, 2014).
What must we do in order to understand a person? We must have time, we must practice looking deeply into this person. We must be there, attentive; we must observe, we must look deeply. And the fruit of this looking deeply is called understanding. Love is a true thing if it is made up of a substance called understanding.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
From True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Publications, 2006).
Truly, I love this life of seclusion.
Carrying my staff, I walk toward a friend’s cottage.
The trees in his garden, soaked by the evening rain,
Reflect the cool, clear autumnal sky.
The owner’s dog comes to greet me;
Chrysanthemums bloom along the fence.
These people have the same spirit as the ancients;
An earthen wall marks their separation from the world.
In the house volumes of poetry are piled on the floor.
Abandoning worldliness, I often come to this tranquil place—
The spirit here is the spirit of Zen.—Ryōkan
From One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan, Translated by John Stevens (Shambhala Publications, 2007).
The starting point for genuinely listening to others is learning to listen to our own body, heart, and mind, the basic intelligence of the present moment.
—Susan Gillis Chapman
From The Five Keys to Mindful Communication by Susan Gillis Chapman (Shambhala Publications, 2012).
Our personal attempts to live humanely in this world are never wasted. Choosing to cultivate love rather than anger just might be what it takes to save the planet from extinction.
—Pema Chödrön
From The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron (Shambhala Publications, 2002).
Wanting and fearing are natural energies, part of evolution’s design to protect us and help us to thrive. But when they become the core of our identity, we lose sight of the fullness of our being. We become identified with, at best, only a sliver of our natural being—a sliver that perceives itself as incomplete, at risk and separate from the rest of the world. If our sense of who we are is defined by feelings of neediness and insecurity, we forget that we are also curious, humorous and caring. We forget about the breath that is nourishing us, the lover that unites us, the enormous beauty and fragility that is our shared experience in being alive. Most basically, we forget the pure awareness, the radiant wakefulness that is our Buddha nature.
—Tara Brach
