Great Throughts Treasury

"We establish some stability and focus in our mind and see which elements in it lead to greater peace, which to greater suffering. All of it both the peace and the suffering?happens lawfully. Freedom lies in the wisdom to choose."

"We need to distinguish the natural state of awareness from what is perhaps our more normal state of distraction."

"We see that each experience is simply just what it is, and that the I and mine are extra."

"What you are looking for is what is looking."

"We often mistakenly assume that because someone has genuine understanding in one particular area, this mastery necessarily extends to all other areas of life. That may or may not be true."

"We do not know when any seed will come to fruition. We can experience the karmic results of our actions in this lifetime, in the next life, or at any time in the future. But our present actions influence which karmic seeds have the opportunity to come to fruition."

"Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease."

"Whatever we frequently think of and ponder, that will become the inclination of our minds."

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

"When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness."

"Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy about something if it cannot be remedied?"

"When we see deeply that all that is subject to arising is also subject to cessation, that whatever arises will also pass away, the mind becomes disenchanted. Becoming disenchanted, one becomes dispassionate. And through dispassion, the mind is liberated."

"When we are with people and feeling bored, can we listen a little more carefully, stepping off the train of our own inner commenting? If we are sitting in meditation and feeling uninterested, can we come in closer to the object, not with force but with gentleness and care? What is this experience we call the breath? If someone were holding your head under water, would the breath be boring? Each breath is actually sustaining our life. Can we be with it fully, just once?"

"Why do we invest so much energy in acquisition? There may be many psychological underpinnings of this behavior, seeing it as compensatory action, even at times compulsion, for some deeper lack. But we can also understand the force behind this habit of accumulation in a simpler way, namely, the profound influence our consumer society has on our minds. It continually reinforces desires and wanting, often co-opting spiritual values to do so. A recent automobile advertisement shows a handsome young couple standing in front of a new car, surrounded by all the latest consumer delights. The caption reads, 'To become one with everything, you need one of everything.'"

"Why do we have this perception of solidity? Why is it so deeply conditioned as our view of reality? This hallucination of perception arises from the great rapidity of changing phenomena. When we go to the movies we cannot see the separate frames of film. They move too quickly to be noticed, and so we remain in the illusion of appearances, overlooking the reality of how the magic works. Of course, in a movie theater that is the whole idea; we go specifically for the illusion. However, when we overlook the reality of our life, it has more serious and far-reaching consequences."

"When we have too much faith, we can become dogmatic, attached to our own views. And we can see all too often how this blind belief leads to so much conflict and suffering in the world."

"Where is the end of seeing, of hearing, of thinking, of knowing?"

"Without the steadiness of concentration, it is easy to get caught up in the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts as they arise. We take them to be self and get carried away by trains of association and reactivity."

"Wisdom is the clear seeing of the impermanent, conditioned nature of all phenomena, knowing that whatever arises has the nature to cease. When we see this impermanence deeply, we no longer cling; and when we no longer cling, we come to the end of suffering."