Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn’t mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside. If you’re truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself…
Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just somebody’s opinion. Like a dog barking. American dogs say, “Woof, woof.” Korean dogs say, “Mung, mung.” Polish dogs say, “How, how.” So which dog barking is correct? This is…
Our small self is the “I, my, me” that feels like a separate person. Our true self has no idea of being separate, because it is before all ideas and thinking. —Jane Dobisz, “Up and Down”
Empathy naturally leads to compassionate action. But simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other’s need. It all begins with the simple act of attention. – Daniel Goleman, “I Feel…
When you give in to aversion and anger, it’s as though, having decided to kill someone by throwing him into a river, you wrap your arms around his neck, jump into the water with him, and you both drown. In…
In Pali, the language of the oldest written Buddhist teachings, the belief in some core notion of self is called sakkaya-ditthi; this is sometimes translated as ‘personality belief.’ It’s said to be the most dangerous of all the defilements, more…
The Buddha’s teaching is highly radical in its break with essentialist thinking, which usually conceives of the ‘real’ as that which does not change. The Buddha’s view was that absolutely everything was changing and therefore the self was not exempt.…
On the spiritual path, there’s nothing to get, and everything to get rid of. . . . The first thing to let go of is trying to get love, and instead to give it. That’s the secret of the spiritual…
Our minds are habituated to relate to suffering by resisting it through blame, bitterness, anger, resentment. That resistance is what the Buddha called ‘the second arrow,’ which follows the first arrow, the direct experience of pain. So much additional suffering…
It is mindfulness that places the mind on the chosen object of meditation and returns the mind to that object when it wanders. As a well-known meditation instruction says, ‘Tie the wild elephant of the mind to the post of…