Great Throughts Treasury

""Be grateful to everyone" is getting at a complete change of attitude. It does not mean that if you're mugged on the street you should smile knowingly and say, "Oh, I should be grateful for this," before losing consciousness. This slogan actually gets at the guts of how we perfect ignorance through avoidance, not knowing that we're eating poison, not knowing that we're putting another layer of protection over our heart, not seeing through the whole thing."

"A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself; it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself."

"A Native American grandfather was speaking to his grandson about violence and cruelty in the world and how it comes about. He said it was as if two wolves were fighting in his heart. One wolf was vengeful and angry, and the other wolf was understanding and kind. The young man asked his grandfather which wolf would win the fight in his heart. And the grandfather answered, ?The one that wins will be the one I choose to feed.? So this is our challenge, the challenge for our spiritual practice and the challenge for the world?how can we train right now, not later, in feeding the right wolf?"

"A warrior begins to take responsibility for the direction of her life. It?s as if we are lugging around unnecessary baggage. Our training encourages us to open the bags and look closely at what we are carrying. In doing this we begin to understand that much of it isn?t needed anymore."

"Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we are stuck, it?s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. ?Doing something different? is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out? Anything that?s non-habitual will do?even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn?t reinforce our crippling habits. The third most difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime."

"Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not... maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine."

"After some time, Rinpoche added another refinement to the instruction. He began to ask us to label our thoughts "thinking." We'd be sitting there with the out-breath and before we knew what had happened we were going- planning, worrying, fantasizing- completely in another world, a world totally made of thoughts. At the point when we realized we'd gone off we were instructed to say to ourselves "thinking" and, without making it a big deal, to simply return again to the out-breath."

"All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best."

"An emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that's all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it."

"As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion."

"As soon as you begin to believe in something, then you can no longer see anything else. The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new."

"As the twelfth-century Tibetan yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.'"

"As we practice, we begin to know the difference between our fantasy and reality."

"At least once a year, I imagine that I am about to die. Looking back as truthfully as I can at my entire life, I give full attention to the things I wish hadn?t occurred. Recognizing these mistakes honestly but without self-recrimination, I try to rejoice in the innate wisdom that allows me to see so bravely, and I feel compassion for how I so frequently messed up. Then I can go forward. The future is wide open, and what I do with it is up to me."

"Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives."

"Awakening is not a process of building ourselves up but a process of letting go. It?s a process of relaxing in the middle?the paradoxical, ambiguous middle, full of potential, full of new ways of thinking and seeing?with absolutely no money-back guarantee of what will happen next."

"Basically, we're continually opening further, learning more , connecting further with the depths of human suffering and human wisdom, coming to know both those elements thoroughly and completely and becoming more loving and compassionate people."

"Be generous with your joy. Be generous with your insights and delights."

"Be grateful to everyone is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out."

"Be grateful to everyone. If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher."

"Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy and our ignorance. We don't act on them; we just see them. Without mindfulness, we don't see them."

"Being fully present isn't something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it's being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself."

"Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way."

"Buddha is our inherent nature?our buddha nature?and what that means is that if you?re going to grow up fully, the way that it happens is that you begin to connect with the intelligence that you already have. It?s not like some intelligence that?s going to be transplanted into you. If you?re going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need to protect yourself or shield yourself because things are too harsh. If you?re going to be a grown-up?which I would define as being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation?it?s because you will allow something that?s already in you to be nurtured. You allow it to grow, you allow it to come out, instead of all the time shielding it and protecting it and keeping it buried. Someone once told me, When you feel afraid, that?s ?fearful buddha.? That could be applied to whatever you feel. Maybe anger is your thing. You just go out of control and you see red, and the next thing you know you?re yelling or throwing something or hitting someone. At that time, begin to accept the fact that that?s enraged buddha. If you feel jealous, that?s jealous buddha. If you have indigestion, that?s buddha with heartburn. If you?re happy, happy buddha; if bored, bored buddha. In other words, anything that you can experience or think is worthy of compassion; anything you could think or feel is worthy of appreciation."

"But in this meditation technique, we are with the out-breath; there's no particular instruction about what to do until the next out-breath."

"But the hard things in life break you. Let them affect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don?t copout on that. Don?t run away and hide under your covers. Lean on it."

"But the instruction that the awareness is only twenty-five percent really brings home the idea that it's not a concentration practice - there's a very light touch on the breath as it goes out."

"Committing to benefit others is traditionally called the path of the bodhisattva, the path of hero and heroine, the path of the spiritual warrior whose weapons are gentleness, clarity of mind, and an open heart. The Tibetan word for warrior, paw for a male warrior or pawmo for a female warrior, means ?the one who cultivates bravery.? As warriors in training, we cultivate the courage and flexibility to live with uncertainty ? with the shaky, tender feeling of anxiety, of nothing to hold on to ? and to dedicate our lives to making ourselves available to every person, in every situation."

"Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves."

"Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at."

"Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance."

"Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live."

"Compassionate action, compassionate speech, is not a one-shot deal; it's a lifetime journey."

"Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. WE give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. then loneliness is no threat and heartache no punishment."

"Determination means to use every challenge you meet as an opportunity to open your heart and soften, determined to not withdraw."

"Devaputra mara involves seeking pleasure. It works like this: When we feel embarrassed or awkward, when pain presents itself to us in any form whatsoever, we run like crazy to try to become comfortable. Any obstacle we encounter has the power to completely pull the rug out, to completely pop the bubble of reality that we have come to regard as secure and certain. When we are threatened that way, we can't stand to feel the pain, the edginess, the anxiety, the queasiness in our stomach, the heat of anger rising, the bitter taste of resentment. Therefore, we try to grasp something pleasant. We react with this tragically human habit of seeking pleasure and trying to avoid pain"

"Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world."

"Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel."

"Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel; take an interest and be curious."

"Even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we are training, they are essentially no big deal. If we can't integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. We can trust our experiences as valid, but then we have to move on and learn how to get along with our neighbors. Then even the most remarkable insights can begin to permeate our lives. As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good not bad. Keep meditation.'"

"Even though there are so many teachings, so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind - thoughts, emotions bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call me or I."

"Every day we should reflect... and ask ourselves: Am I going to add to the aggression in the world? Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?"

"Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made."

"Everybody loves something, even if it's only tortillas."

"Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego... Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well."

"First we like pleasure: We are attached to it. Conversely, we don't like pain. Second, we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. we dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don't like losing what we have. According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites- pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame- is what keeps us stuck in the pain..."

"For each and every one of us, intelligence, warmth, and openness are always accessible."

"For us, as people sitting here meditating, as people wanting to live a good, full, unrestricted, adventurous, real kind of life, there is concrete instruction that we can follow, which is the one we have been following all along in meditation: see what is. Acknowledge it without judging it as right or wrong. See it clearly without judgment and let it go. Come back to the present moment. From now until the moment of your death, you could do this. As a way of becoming more compassionate, as way of becoming less dogmatic, prejudiced, determined to have your own way, absolutely sure that you?re right and the other person is wrong, as a way to develop a sense of humor, to lighten it up, open it up, you could do this."

"Get used to the feeling of falling."

"Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves is the path of the warrior."