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Post by t-bob on Oct 2, 2019 11:31:44 GMT -5
Mending the True Problem
If your car is broken, you don’t try to find ways to repaint its chassis; most of our problems—and therefore our solutions, our peace of mind—lie within.
—Pico Iyer, “Adventures in Going Nowhere
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Post by t-bob on Oct 3, 2019 8:07:54 GMT -5
How to Appreciate Just Being
It is precisely our recognition of life’s inevitable hardships, along with our uprooting of the attachment that exacerbates them, that allows us to appreciate the mere fact of being.
—Reverend Patti Nakai, “Someone Is Jealous of YOu
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Post by t-bob on Oct 5, 2019 8:52:02 GMT -5
What Is the Nature of Your Mind?
You don’t have to believe anything. Just understand your mind; how it works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises, and where emotions come from. It is sufficient to know the nature of all that; that alone can bring you happiness and peace.
—Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Your Mind Is Your Religion”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 6, 2019 13:17:51 GMT -5
Turn Meditation into Action
Don’t confuse training with trying: Meditation to develop compassion is not actually being compassionate to others. If you want to weaken your self-centeredness, go on and meditate, but don’t stop there. Take compassionate action.
—Sallie Tisdale, “Self-Care for Future Corpses”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 7, 2019 8:26:01 GMT -5
Making Our Own Peace
Forgiveness is really not about someone’s harmful behavior; it’s about our own relationship with our past. When we begin the work of forgiveness, it is primarily a practice for ourselves.
—Gina Sharpe, “The Power of Forgiveness
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Post by t-bob on Oct 9, 2019 9:25:09 GMT -5
Becoming the Stream
Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.
—Gary Snyder, “Just One Breath
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Post by t-bob on Oct 10, 2019 8:47:25 GMT -5
The Salve of Self-Compassion
Self-blame is an internalized second aggressor that can victimize us long after external damage is done. Self-compassion is like applying first aid to a wound and is the necessary first step to any process of healing.
—Miles Neale, “How to Heal After Your Teacher Crosses the Line
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Post by t-bob on Oct 11, 2019 9:49:04 GMT -5
Celebrate Who You Are
Life is given to us for free. How can we repay such a gift except with the fullness of our own life?
—Caitriona Reed, “Coming Out Whole
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Post by t-bob on Oct 12, 2019 8:45:04 GMT -5
Can You Change Your Relationship to Your Life?
There’s no question that hard and difficult things happen to us. The question is, what is our reaction to it? What is our relationship to what happens? The Buddhist teachings are both revolutionary and simple in that they attempt to change our relationship to our life experience, whatever that is.
—Larry Rosenberg, “The Weather Is Just the Weather
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Post by t-bob on Oct 14, 2019 8:40:35 GMT -5
Offer Yourself a Comfortable Refuge
Any diligent practice of watchfulness, including meditation, requires routine and rhythm. During meditation, when we offer the body a familiar seat and comfortable environment, we create a refuge in which we can better discern and understand what’s going on in our constantly shifting private landscape.
—Lauren Krauze, “A Watchfulness Routine for Writing”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 15, 2019 8:56:49 GMT -5
Sitting with Vulnerability
By putting things in a bigger context, [we are] able to enter a whole realm of practice—learning to stay with the rawness or vulnerability of being human.
—Pema Chödrön, “On Not Losing Heart
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Post by t-bob on Oct 16, 2019 8:32:11 GMT -5
Gifts at the End of Life
The end of life often offers rare opportunities to affirm and deepen our highest human values—reconciling conflicts, sharing forgiveness and gratitude, deepening a sense of loving intimacy, and rising above our myopic experience of ourselves, our lives, and the world.
—Joseph Loizzo, “So the Darkness Shall Be the Light
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Post by t-bob on Oct 17, 2019 9:06:20 GMT -5
What Questions about the Self Really Matter?
Puzzling over the metaphysics of the self, the Buddha said, pulls us away from what really matters, and from posing the question about ourselves that really matters: what can I do, right now, that will lead to lasting well-being and happiness?
—Mary Talbot, “Saving Vacchagotta
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Post by t-bob on Oct 18, 2019 8:30:49 GMT -5
How to Hold Your Mind Open
Thoughts are endless, and they rush in to fill the yawning well of awareness. But one might learn to hold that space open, with practice. It may not stay empty—but one can choose what to let in.
—Jeff Greenwald, “The Great Indoors”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 19, 2019 8:29:43 GMT -5
Discovering Truth
Grief can lead us to a profound understanding that reaches beyond our individual loss. It opens us to the most essential truth of our lives: the truth of impermanence, the causes of suffering, and the illusion of separateness.
—Mark Matousek, “A Splinter of Love”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 20, 2019 10:11:57 GMT -5
Every Moment Is Significant
Life is mostly about mundane experiences. When you start thinking that only your most thrilling experiences are significant, you have already lost the most precious thing in life, the ability to fully immerse yourself in every experience.
—Brad Warner, “It’s the Journey, Not the Trip
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Post by t-bob on Oct 21, 2019 8:25:30 GMT -5
An Interconnected Experience
Our experience is not primarily that of a separate consciousness trapped in its head; rather, when we look out at a sunset, we experience ourselves out-there, at the sunset.
—Matthew Abrahams, “A More Human Nature
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Post by t-bob on Oct 22, 2019 8:35:18 GMT -5
Resting Comfortably with Emotions
Instead of either controlling or sequestering our feelings, we can learn to both contain and feel them fully. That containment allows us to feel vulnerable or hurt without immediately erupting into anger; it allows us to feel neediness without clinging to the other person. We acknowledge our dependency.
—Barry Magid, “No Gain”
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Post by t-bob on Oct 23, 2019 8:41:56 GMT -5
Learning Buddhism
When we become fundamentally aware of the mind’s incessant need to reify experience into fixed categories that are convenient to the self, then we are learning Buddhism.
—Victor Hori, “Sweet and Sour Buddhism
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Post by t-bob on Oct 24, 2019 8:45:28 GMT -5
Expressing Your Needs without Clinging
Expressing my needs, without making them into demands, can be as much a path to growth as letting them go. Needs aren’t the problem; it is rigidly clinging to a particular strategy to meet them that produces suffering.
—Katy Butler, “Say It Right”
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