buddhism

Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness.Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease.

If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you would have done if you only had the chance, you will miss your life. Ok, you will fail to connect with it. You will fail to connect with other people.

Actively, we are motivated by the never-ending desires of the self. We are compelled to pursue whatever the self imagines will satisfy its desires. We are convinced that satisfaction of desire is the source of true happiness. Yet the very nature of desire does not permit happiness. Like trying to quench one's thirst by drinking salt water, satisfying desire only stimulates the flow of desire. In the wake of fulfillment, desire once more stirs and reaches out. There is never lasting satisfaction, not even completion.

While a man desires a woman,His mind is boundAs closely as a calf to its mother.As you would pluck an autumn lily,Pluck the arrow of desire.

desires are not killed by fulfilling them

An outrageous instinct to love and be loved blinded your arms to lines of propriety___omen and Men, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, white, black, red, brown. An outrageous instinct to love and be loved executed your brain every hour on the hour.

In fact, no form of death places a greater burden on society than suicide, for the act of suicide is the way a person seeks to resolve his alienation from a cooperative society.

The idea that traumatic residues__r unresolved stories__an be inherited is groundbreaking.

The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.

Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of others.

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are __ood_. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are __ad_. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. __ood. Bad. The cup holds both.

Life is suffering--and yet.

The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together.

The goal of becoming a better person is within the reach of us all, at every moment. ... We need only invoke the power of mindful awareness in any action of body, speech, or mind to elevate that action from the unconscious reflex of a trained creature to the awakened choice of a human being who is guided to a higher life by wisdom. ... We may not "complete" the work in this lifetime and root out the very mechanism by which our minds and bodies manifest their hereditary karmic toxins. Yet to whatever extent we can notice them as they arise, understand them for what they are, and gently abandon our grasp of them - if only for this moment - we are gaining ground in the grand scheme of things. And even a modest moment of emancipation from the unwholesome roots of greed, hatred, and delusion is a moment without suffering.

Mindfulness means being present to whatever is happening here and now - when mindfulness is strong, there is no room left in the mind for wanting something else. With less liking and disliking of what arises, there is less pushing and pulling on the world, less defining of the threshold between self and other, resulting in a reduced construction of self. As the influence of self diminishes, suffering diminishes in proportion.

We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?

How long the path may be depends for any man on where he stands today and his speed of travel. These are his past and present choosing, but the beginning of the way is here and now, and karma and rebirth are the means of treading it.