Demons

" A demon is not an entity that appears in a black form to terrify us, but it is whatever creates delays in the achievement of liberation."

Ma-gchig Lab-sgron

11th Century Tibetan Yogini

Color

People are forms and character, their color.



Failing is not that bad,
Trying is not that easy,
And winning is not that glorious.



Peace through war is violence,
War through peace is non-violence.



To smile at your foes is not as easy as it looks,
Although you only need to stretch your lips a bit.


Könchog Thubten
A 21 year old Tibetan monk.

Nakedness of quiet

The nakedness of quiet or presence disarms you so that you can't avoid any experience, any event, anything.

Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief.

Realize yourself and be free. When you are in the true quiet, you realize that when you hear a jackhammer, that's the quietness -- it's just taken some form. True quiet is absolutely inclusive. It goes beyond all dualistic ideas of what quiet is. When we come into stillness, we find that stillness is not separate from motion or movement.

Silence is the only teaching and the only teacher that is there all the time. Every minute that you are awake, every minute that you are alive, every minute that you breathe, it's right there.

Adyshanti
"Emptiness Dancing"

Ungrateful

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Kahlil Gibran

Impossible

"Impossible is unacceptable."

Stevie Wonder

We will develop in infinite ways

Cynicism closes the possibilities and the channels of life. It shrivels the soul. Compassion manifests in infinite ways, and through manifesting it in ourselves, we will develop in infinite ways.

A Poem

Eh Ma Ho!

Blind we are not to see
Our practice belongs on the streets of ordinary life
Amidst the hue and cry of samsara.
With the Bodhi mind
Flexible but firm,
Wisdom beings swim in this ocean
Guiding all to liberation.

Bless You

Today I sat down next a minister in a restaurant. We entered into a discussion mostly about the book of Job and also the notion of impermanence. He got up to leave before me, as he was walking away he turned and said, “Bless you.” It struck me that we all have the power to use these words and should use them more.

Bless you all.

Soft Wind in the Trees

Breathing in,
Imagine sitting outdoors,
Listening to a soft wind in the trees.
Breathing out,
Let the wind take your cares away.

Excerpt From 'Ten Seconds to Peace'

Suspend your Feelings

Breathing in,
Feel your breath.
Breathing out,
Suspend your feelings.

Excerpt from 'Ten Seconds to Peace'

Who am I without the me concept?

If we ask, "Who am I without the me concept? What am I without the me?" Instantly the wordless can open up, the conceptless can open up. Allow the experience of that, because that is the living answer to the questions, "What am I? Who am I?" This is not the dead conceptual conceptual answer, but the living answer. It is alive! In this moment radiant awakeness there's a mystery unfolding unto itself, moment to moment to moment. This living state of being, call it what you will, is the only thing that you always have been, always will be, and are right now. You are not a human being, you are being appearing as human.

Excerpt from 'Emptiness Dancing' by Adyashanti

Generosity

The first principle of an enlightened life is the integration of generosity of action and spirit in all that we do. Christians call this charity. The word charity comes from the Latin word ‘caritas’, which means unconditional caring; it doesn’t only mean giving pennies to the poor. ‘Caritas’ means unattached generosity, boundless openness, and unconditional love: Open heart, Open mind, Open hand.

A closed fist holds nothing.
An open hand holds the world.

It’s wise to let go of our attachments and aversions. Resistance to letting go is suffering. Craving and attachment are suffering. Aversion is suffering. Therefore, it’s wise to let them go.

Excerpt from Enlighten Your Life: The Six Principles

Carefree

See yourself walking in a garden,
You come upon a most beautiful rose.
Breathing in,
You fully take in its scent.
Breathing out,
You are carefree.

Excerpt from Ten Seconds to Peace

Take Charge of Your Life

Take charge of your life. Be responsible for it because no one else will. Take charge of your life, because today may be your last day on earth. Your life is very precious. Make sure what you do is a product of your own conclusions, of your own awakenings. You can’t go back in time to correct your mistakes. You can go forward and not repeat them.

Passage from Enlighten Your Life: The Six Principles

Self-confidence & Spirituality

Self-confidence takes root in the act of letting go of attachments from minor agitations, to obstacles, fears, desires, and hopes. These attachments hold you back from accomplishing meaningful goals in your life. You can let go because that ‘still voice’ inside will never fail you. The more you let go, the more you will have ‘self-mastery’, and with ‘self-mastery’ you will become fearless. As you travel on the path of your individual search for wisdom and compassion, the strength of your search, is reinforced by this act of faith.

Passage from Enlighten Your Life: The Six Principles

Have Faith in your Mind

HAVE FAITH IN YOUR MIND
A Gatha by the 3rd Ch’an Patriarch of China



It is not hard to realize your Mind, which should not be an object of your
choice.
When you throw like and not like away, you'll be clear about it.
A slight deviation from it creates a gulf as deep as that which lies between
heaven and earth.
If you want Mind to manifest itself, be neither for nor against a thing, for
This is contention, a disease that afflicts the Mind.
If you ignore its profundity, you can never practice stillness.
Like the great void, it is Perfect and lacks nothing, nor has any excess.
If you discriminate, you will miss its suchness.
Cling not to external causes, nor stay in the void.
Differentiation ceases if you can be impartial.
Stillness comes when all disturbances are stopped, cling to stillness is
Also a mistake.
If you cling to opposites, how will you know the One?
If you do not recognize One Mind, two opposites will lead you nowhere.
To avoid what IS means to cling yet to what IS NOT, to cling to what IS NOT
Means to fall back on what IS.
The more you talk and think, the further you are from it.
When you halt all speech and thought, you will find it everywhere.
If you believe success comes with returning all things to their source,
You will still be clinging to its function.
The instant that you look within,
You surpass your contemplation of the Void,
Which is always changing because of your discrimination of views.
Seek not the real, but lay your false views down.
Avoid both he real and the false,
And never search for either.
Once you begin to choose between right and wrong,
You will become confused and lose your Mind.
All opposites arise from the One Mind, which must not be cling to.
If the One Mind is not disturbed, all things will then be harmless.
When all things are harmless, then they will cease to be,
Mind that does not stir does not exist.
Subjects that are separated from their objects vanish.
Objects are caused by subjects and depend on their existence.
If you would understand dualities,
Know that they spring from Absolute Voidness.
The absolute and all dualities are the same,
And from the same do all things originate.
When you do not choose between the course and the fine, all prejudices die.
Since the Great Mind embraces all, it is neither difficult nor easy to
Realize it.
In their distrust the ignorant waver between hesitation and eagerness.
If you grasp at it, you will be wrong and will have fallen in the way of
Heretics.
If you lay it down, it will neither stay nor go.
Unite your nature with the Way, and you will be free of troubles.
Clinging leads to separation from the real and leads to confusion is useless
And only wearies the mind.
If you want to know the One, do not reject the data of the six senses.
If they are not rejected they are the same as Enlightenment.
The wise man is non-active. The ignorant bind themselves.
Clinging comes from delusion but all things are the same at heart.
If you use the mind to seek itself, this is a grave mistake. Delusion brings
Stillness and disturbance; Enlightenment is beyond all good and all evil.
All pairs of opposites come from discrimination.
Dreams, illusions and flowers in the sky are not worth attachment.
Gain and loss, right and wrong; these should be laid down at once.
If you do not close your eyes in sleep, all dreams disappear.
If you do not discriminate, you will see all things as they are.
Profound is this state of suchness, it is lofty and beyond illusions.
If things are not thought different, they will return to their nature.
When they disappear, the Mind is beyond comparison.
When it stops moving there is not more disturbance, when all motion stops,
Stillness also disappears.
When opposites disappear, where then can the One Mind be?
When you search for the Ultimate, you find that it is beyond patterns.
In this impartial mind, duality has vanished.
When distrust ceases, your faith will be complete.
When all is thrown away, there is nothing to remember.
The Mind that is now pure radiates and is not tired.
Since it is beyond discrimination, it cannot be understood by that which
Knows and feels.
Such is the absolute state, free from self and others.
If you would be one with it, avoid all duality.
Neither inside nor outside is the non-dual and it is the same throughout.
Sages everywhere have laid claim to this teaching, which is beyond time, long
Or short, for a thought last for ten thousand years!
It neither IS nor IS NOT, for everywhere is here.
The smallest equals the largest, for it is not confined by space.
The largest equals the smallest, for it is neither within nor without.
IS and IS NOT are the same, for what IS NOT equals IS.
If you cannot awaken to this, then you should change your ways.
Now One is ALL and All is One.
If you can awaken to this, why worry if you have not yet found it?
Just believe that the Mind is non-dual, for your Faith in it is not divided.

In it there is no room for words and speech; is has no past, no present or
No future.

Right Where You Are

"If you cannot find the truth
Right where you are,
Where do you expect to find it?"

Dogen

Real Meditation

Real meditation is letting go of control.

Adyashanti

Four Ways of Turning the Mind

Oh! This kind of leisure and endowment is supremely difficult to obtain.
Having obtained this body, which is easily lost,
Do not waste it meaninglessly
But rather use it to attain the ultimate liberation.
Joyous result!

The nature of all phenomena is impermanence;
Death is a certainty for all who are born.
Death can descend anytime like a drop of morning dew on a blade of grass.
Quick! It is the time to make effort for the essence of Dharma.

The fruit of one's positive karma is happiness;
Suffering is the fruit of negative karma.
The inexorable karmic causation is the mode of abiding of all dharmas.
Henceforth, practice the Dharma by distinguishing
Between what should be practiced and what should be given up.

In the three lower realms,
And even in the three higher ones,
There is not an instant of absolute happiness.
I will avoid the root cause of my samsaric existence and practice
The Excellent path of peace to Enlightenment.

Be happy for no reason

The mind is made up of opposing energies that spark and create the fire of life. When we're standing in the light, then we have a shadow. If we don't have a shadow, then we're standing in darkness. The shadow is the part of us that we're ashamed of, that we don't want people to know about.
When you exhibit so-called positive and negative traits, you are not flawed; you are complete.

Deepak Chopra
Power Freedom and Grace

A book well worth buying

What is Time?

All thoughts, concepts, and emotions are what is understood as Time. From a Taoist and Buddhist perspective, complete cessation through meditation is the portal to attaining powers of transcendence such as immortality and movement.

In the present

In the breath of the present moment, where are your thoughts?