Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.
Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.
You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.
We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.
The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.
To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.
Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.
It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self's agenda.
Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.
Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.
Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.
With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.
When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?
If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.
If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.
If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
