Category Buddhism

If I’m torn between truth and falsehood, I have to ask myself if the choice I’m leaning toward would be self-serving or selfless, harsh or kind, harmful or harmless. Only then can I know what’s best to do. – Lin…

Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the…

When a Zen teacher says, “Go back to your original state!” he does not ask you to become a caveman, an amoeba or ether. He asks you to become mind by itself, without words, without images, without any kind of…

Train to return to attention whenever you become aware that you are lost. And then just do it. Place attention and rest. Return and rest. Again and again. —Ken McLeod, “Forget About Consistency”

The real purpose of Buddhist practice is to cut down your addictions and to correct your habitual patterns and this can be achieved as a layperson or as a monk or nun. That brings us to the question of Buddhist…

Craving creates tunnel vision: we see only what we yearn for. Mindfulness allows us to see that and much more, giving us the choice not to act on our desires. —Joan Duncan Oliver, “Drink and a Man”

The relationship of religion to truth is like that of a menu to a meal. The menu describes the meal as best it can. It points to something beyond itself. As long as we use the menu as a guide…

When anger arises, or sorrow or love or joy, it is just anger angering, sorrow sorrowing, love loving, joy joying. Different feelings arise and pass, each simply expressing its own nature. The problem arises when we identify with these feelings,…

Compassion is not condescension, but a leveling of the playing field, a recognition of yourself in others and an acceptance that their stress is your stress, that their happiness is your own. The gulf between us all is imaginary, born…

Awareness is always present. We cannot function without it, but we can function without recognizing it. —Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Good Shepherd”