vajraGrrrl

Anxiety is always a gap between the way things are and they way we think they ought to be. Anxiety is something that stretches between the real and the unreal. Our human desire is to avoid what’s real and instead be with our ideas about the world : “I’m terrible.” “You’re terrible.” :You’re wonderful.” The idea is separate from reality, and anxiety is the gap between the ida and the reality that things are just as they are. When we cease to believe in the object that we’ve created —which is off to one side of reality, so to speak—things snap back to the center. That’s what being centered means. The anxiety then fades out.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Realization is to get rid of the delusion that you have not realized.

Ramana Maharshi

We think we have to deal with our problems in a way that exterminates them, that distorts or denies their reality. But in doing so, we try to make Reality into something other than what it is. We try to manipulate and rearrange the world so that dogs will never bite, accidents will never happen, and the people we care about will never die. Even on the surface, the futility of such efforts should be obvious.

Steve Hagen

To set up what you like against what you dislike—this is the disease of the mind.

Seng-T’san

Acts of compassion have no ‘meaning’ in the sense of validating anything in the bodhisattva; acts of compassion are just acts of compassion and do not need a reason or justification. They become truly acts of compassion when the bodhisattva is simultaneously aware that these acts of compassion in samsara are just as empty as anything else, including the bodhisattva herself.

Mu Soebng

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

Ram Dass 

The heart of the Bodhisattva is always turned toward other beings. Such a one chooses to place herself in the most difficult situations, and has the energy and natural commitment to harrow souls from the hells that they have created. And she does this with no attachment to outcome and a spirit of radical optimism.

Joan Halifax

Depression is just like the weather—it comes and goes.

Pema Chödrön

Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment.

Ram Dass

As for the inevitability of death, we have to remember that it’s not just the body that grows old, decays and dies. Our feelings and mental states do the same thing. If you close your eyes for just one minute, you can experience how a feeling or emotion is born, grows old, and passes away. It’s like a wave, rising to a peak and then breaking apart. In the same way, our perceptions grow old and die. Our thoughts grow old and die. Our consciousness grows old and dies. This is the nature of our existence, and it’s happening every moment.

Bhante Gunaratana Henepola

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Dogen

We confuse attachment with love. Attachment is concerned with my needs, my happiness, while love is an unselfish attitude concerned with the needs and happiness of others. Most of the time our love is mixed with attachment because we do not feel secure on our own, and try to find wholeness through another. We become dependent on the good feelings and comfort of the relationship and then suffer when it changes. A relationship free of unrealistic grasping is free of disappointment, conflict, jealousy, and other problems, and is fertile ground for the love of growth and wisdom.

Kathleen McDonald

As a well cut diamond has many facets, each reflecting a different color of light, so does the word yoga, each facet reflecting a different shade of meaning and revealing different aspects of the entire range of human endeavor to an inner peace and happiness.

BKS Iyengar

The yogi understands the faults in others by seeing and studying them first in himself.

BKS Iyengar

There’s no need to philosophize your work in order to make it spiritual. It has spiritual bearing anyway. If you regard yourself as a person on the spiritual path, then whatever you do is part of the path, an expression of the path. Decentralization, the absence of ego, the lack of searching for happiness, and not avoiding pain — all of that brings us into the reality of dealing with things directly and thoroughly. Dealing with things in this decentralized, egoless manner is known in the Buddhist tradition as upaya, or skillful means. Without that, there is no means of discovering the inner guru, or inner teacher, as one might call it, which is the constant instruction that you begin to receive on the path. The daily living situation becomes the teaching; it becomes a constant learning process. There’s no way of developing that sense of inner teacher if you fail to relate with daily living situations directly, because without that, there’s no interchange with your world.

Chögyam Trunga Rinpoche