True happiness is always available to us, but first we have to create the environment for it to flourish.
A society of hard and inflexible minds is a society that is incapable of nurturing the flowers of love and compassion. This is the source of the dark age.
We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is.
The bewildered mind is weak because it is continually distracted. It's distracted by the over-riding need to maintain the comfort of "me".
With an untrained mind, we'll live most days of our lives at the mercy of our moods…. Most of the time we believe that the mind-set we have is who we are and we live our day from it. We meditate on it. We don't question it.
Striking out when we're in pain is clearly one way we perpetuate misery.
The notion of meditation is very simple. We slow down and begin to look at the pattern of our life.
On any given day, our consciousness is fragmented and scattered in all directions. Yet when thunder shakes the sky, we're suddenly sharply focused.
To recognize a thought is to see the mind vibrating. To acknowledge that we're thinking slows the movement down.
In gathering our scattered mind we begin to discover who we really are right now, just by seeing that the web of thoughts we solidified as "me" is actually a series of vibrations.
Believing that thought patterns are a solid self is the source of our bewilderment and suffering.
Our root fantasy is that "I" am real and that there's a way to make "me" happy.
In every emotional situation, there's a subject, an object, and an action.
By releasing the web of beliefs and concepts that holds our sense of self solid, we're softening the ground of basic goodness so that love and compassion can break through.
If you're not crisp and fresh in recognizing and releasing thoughts, you're not really meditating; you're ingraining sloppiness. Those thoughts will gain power, and eventually you won't be meditating at all. You'll just be thinking.
Accepting impermanence means that we spend less energy resisting reality.
One of my favorite Tibetan sayings is, "even if you're going to die tomorrow, you can learn tonight".
Contemplating death gives us strength because it liberates our fear.
The desire to feel satisfied is a continual process that drives our lives, and the end result is suffering. Samsara is not a sin; it's just what ends up happening when we're driven by negative emotions.
Whenever we seek more self-satisfaction, we end up with more suffering, from minor to extreme.
Our motivation is what paves the path from bewilderment and suffering to wisdom.
The mind comes in and out of existence on a momentary basis, and thus the ability to know also comes in and out of existence on a momentary basis. Now is a fleeting moment but it is knowable.
Insight is the higher view that draws conclusions about what awareness sees.
The power of awareness tells us how the mind feels, what it's experiencing, the quality of our meditation, and how we're conducting it. It notices the transitory nature of thoughts, emotions, and concepts.
