Blog

Renounce Your Self-Importance

Buddhism means not being concerned with whether you’re seen as a hot-shot Dalai Lama, or a hot-shot Pope, or a hot-shot parent, or even a halfway decent anything. . . . The ego is just a construct. Get over it.

– Christine Cox, “The Groucho Moment “

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle; every cubic inch of space is a miracle. Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same. . . . What strange miracles are these! Everywhere . . .

– Walt Whitman

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

The Poets of Ch’an Buddhism

Delusion vs. Enlightenment
That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things / is called delusion; / That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self / is called enlightenment.

– Dogen Zenji, ” Wandering Clouds: The Poets of Ch’an Buddhism “

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Can Occupy Wall Street succeed? It can, if it continues to place generosity and compassion before greed, and to recognize the power of interdependence, causality and selflessness.

– Roshi Joan Halifax and Maia Duerr

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Like archeologists, we have to dig down through the layers of self-deception and denial to get to something that is deeply and brilliantly true.

– Martha Beck, WIL 2017

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Practice from Strength

You lack nothing. You lack nothing, therefore you practice. Therefore you must realize and manifest this no-lack, this realized life, this awakened life that you are.

– Elihu Genmyo Smith, “No Need to Do Zazen, Therefore Must Do Zazen”

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Right now, many of us feel an immense shift in the way humans live in this world. That shift, while benevolent, comes from within, rather than from our culture. That means your inner compass will inevitably tell you to break society’s expectations. Maybe that’s happening right now. If not, wait a few minutes. It’s coming.

– Compass v. Culture…Insight From Martha

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Thoughts Are Idiosyncratic Visitors

When you stop to examine your thoughts you start to see that they have a life of their own, they come and go, generally in a random, idiosyncratic way. Recognizing the constancy of our endless thinking process is said to be one of the important early steps we take on the meditation path.

– Bob Sharples, “Do the Thoughts Ever Stop “

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

Abandoning Distraction

Even on a small scale in daily life situations, such as when we feel bored or ill at ease, instead of trying to avoid these feelings by staying busy or buying another fancy gadget, we learn to look more clearly at our impulses, attitudes, and defenses. In this way dukkha guides and deepens our motivation to the point where we’ll say, ‘Enough running, enough walls, I’ll grow through handling my blocks and lost places.’

– Ajahn Sucitto, “Commentary on the Buddha’s First Teaching”

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks

What Love Is and Is Not

Love is not about getting what we want. Love is about how we live with what we are given.

– C. W. Huntington Jr., “Seeing Things As They Are “

Read More Mini Mindfulness Breaks