buddhism

The awareness that seeks to know is the very object of its own seeking.

It is possible to refine awareness itself so much that the emptiness of things, and the role mental construction plays, becomes a directly apprehended reality.

At the last stages of the journey, there__ no journey at all.

Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you__e the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you__e not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.

Part of why I love these angry, straight, white punks is that they are stripping the dharma of its bullshit, and applying it to contexts and styles that, even if they aren__ mine, are at least different from the norm.

Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity.

When you can no longer tell the difference between being yourself and being love, you are not far from waking up.

What a miracle, that all we have to do to be beautifully loving creatures is just relax and allow.

In the practice of exchanging self & other, paradoxes abound.

I tell my students not to be frightened; in the history of Buddhism-for 2,500 years-no one has broken or fractured a leg because of sitting in meditation.

All relaxation does is allow the truth to be felt. The mind is cleared, like a dirty window wiped clean, and the magnitude of what we might ordinarily take for granted inspires tears.

Our task and challenge as human beings is to appreciate, in the same instant, both the infinite significance and absolute insignificance of life.

Against The Stream is more than just another book about meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West, It is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses.

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once_Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one__ own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound.

Some perceive God in the heart by the intellect through meditation; others by the yoga of knowledge; and others by the yoga of work. Some, however, do not understand Brahman, but having heard from others, take to worship. They also transcend death by their firm faith to what they have heard.

I sit in meditation_and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe were coming to attention, a Universe of which one is the center, a Universe that is not the same yet not different from oneself: within man as within mountains there are many parts of hydrogen and oxygen, of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and other elements. __ou never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars_(Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation)The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no __eaning,_ they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share.

Meditate, _nanda, do not delay, or else you will regret it later. This is our instruction to you.

Meditation,_ said his teacher, __asn__ got a damn thing to do with anything, __ause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn__ develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the self. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass. What good is it? Good for nothing. Excellent for nothing. Yes, Lord, but when you get down to nothing, you get down to ultimate reality. It__ then and exactly then that you__e sensing the true nature of the universe, you__e linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you__e content with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there__ the only place to be.