Though our collaboration, I have come to see that “awakening” involves the capacity to train the mind to move our
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brains, and our relationships, toward the open plane of possibility. Rather than being swept up into engrained patterns of thought or feeling, constrained by prior expectation and filtered perception, we can intentionally move our mental lives toward openness and creativity.
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From this new emergence arises a sense of vitality and clarity, which lie at the heart of well-being.
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With integrative reflective practices, our relationships with one another can become filled with compassion and kindness.
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The wholeness of awakening is the message of this book.Read more at location 143
All aspects of your life are your field of practice, the precise place to find freedom and compassion. From politics and parenting to meditation and education, from sex and drugs to poetry and art, every part of your life is sacred. This very life, your work, your family, your community is the only place for awakening. In Zen this is called “no part left out.”Read more at location 144
When sitting, standing, walking, and lying down; through right speech, right action, right livelihood; inwardly and outwardly, with the whole body, feelings, mind, and relationships; in solitude and community; in prison, hut, farm, or palace; in times of war or peace; in sickness and in health.Read more at location 151
To find this freedom, you must learn how to quiet the mind and open the heart. This is the purpose of meditation.Read more at location 162
As it turned out, sitting in the dark forest with its tigers and snakes was easier than sitting with my inner demons—my insecurity, loneliness, shame, boredom; my frustrations and hurts. Sitting with these took more courage than practicing all night in the charnel ground. Little by little I learned to face them with mindfulness, to make a clearing within the dark woods of my own heart.Read more at location 256
One Buddhist practitioner, David, identified himself as a failure. His life had many disappointments, and after a few years of Buddhist practice, he was disappointed by his meditation too. He became calmer but that was all. He was still plagued by unrelenting critical thoughts and self-judgments, leftovers from a harsh and painful past. HeRead more at location 328
identified with these thoughts and his wounded history. Even the practice of compassion for himself brought little relief. Then, during a ten-day mindfulness retreat, he was inspired by the teachings on nonidentification. He was touched by the stories of those who faced their demons and freed themselves. He remembered the account of the Buddha, who on the night of his enlightenment faced the armies and temptations of Mara, a powerful demon of Buddhist folklore who personifies our difficulties and obstacles on the path. David decided to stay up all night and directly face his own demons. For many hours, he tried to be mindful of his breath and body. In between sittings, he took periods of walking meditation. At each sitting, he was washed over by familiar waves of sleepiness, body pains, and critical thoughts. Then he began to notice that each changing experience was met by oneRead more at location 331
common element, awareness itself. In the middle of the night, he had an “aha” moment. He realized that awareness was not affected by any of these experiences, that it was open and untouched, like space itself. All his struggles, the painful feelings and thoughts, came and went without the slightest disturbance to awareness itself. Awareness became his refuge. David decided to test his realization. The meditation hall was empty so he rolled on the floor. Awareness just noticed. He stood up, shouted, laughed, made funny animal noises. Awareness just noticed. He ran around the room, he lay down quietly, he went outside to the edge of the forest, he picked up a stone and threw it, jumped up and down, laughed, came back and sat. Awareness just noticed it all. Finding this, he felt free. He watched the sun rise softly over the hills. Then he went back to sleep for a time. And when he reawakened, his day was full of joy.Read more at location 338
Even when his doubts came back, awareness just noticed. Like the rain, his awareness allowed all things equally.Read more at location 344
With joy, whatever we do becomes holy. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this when he said, “If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote his plays.”Read more at location 729
Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life. In Tibet, the monks and nuns offer prayers of gratitude even for the suffering they have experienced: “Grant that I might have enough suffering to awaken in me the deepest possible compassion and wisdom.” Gratitude does not envy or compare. Gratitude receives in wonder the myriad offerings of rain and sunlight, the care that supports every single life.Read more at location 734
The world we live in is a temple, and the miraculous light of the first stars is shining through it all the time. In place of original sin, we celebrate original goodness. Saint Teresa of Ávila explains, “God does not desire the soul to undertake any labor, but only to take delight in the first fragrance of the flowers . . . the soul can obtain sufficient nourishment from its own garden.” In every meeting of the eyes and every leafing tree, in every taste of tangerine and avocado, a blessing occurs. This is true mental health.Read more at location 742
This perspective is called finding the goodness in everything. As proof of the human capacity to do so, here is a prayer written by an unknown prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and left beside the body of a dead child: “O Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill, but also those of ill will. But do not remember only the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember too the fruits we brought forth thanks to this suffering—our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”Read more at location 766
But where, as dharma practitioners, do we start? In a complex political world how do we find a way toward peace? Our first task is to make our own heart a zone of peace. Instead of becoming entangled in the bitterness and cynicism that exist externally, we need to begin to heal those qualities within ourselves. We have to face our own suffering, our own fear, and transform them into compassion. Only then can we become ready to offer genuine help to the outside world. Albert Camus writes, “We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves.”Read more at location 786
Roberto De Vicenzo, the famous Argentine golfer, once won a tournament, and after receiving the check and smiling for the cameras, he went to the clubhouse and prepared to leave. Sometime later he walked alone to his car in the parking lot and was approached by a young woman. She congratulated him on his victory and then told him that her child was seriously ill and near death. De Vicenzo was touched by her story and took out a pen and endorsed his winning check for payment to the woman. “Make some good days for the baby,” he said as he pressed the check into her hand. The next week he was having lunch in a country club when a PGA official came to his table. “Some of the guys in the parking lot last week told me you met a young woman there after you won the tournament.” De Vicenzo nodded. “Well,” said the official, “I have news for you. She’s a phony. She’s not married. She has no sick baby. She fleeced you, my friend.” “You mean there is no baby who is dying?” asked De Vicenzo. “That’s right.” “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week,” said De Vicenzo.Read more at location 1123
Once, on the train from Washington to Philadelphia, I found myself seated next to an African-American man who had worked for the State Department in India but had quit to run a rehabilitation program for juvenileRead more at location 1139
offenders in the District of Columbia. Most of the youths he worked with were gang members who had committed homicide. One fourteen-year-old boy in his program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. At the trial, the victim’s mother sat impassively silent until the end, when the youth was convicted of the killing. After the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him and stated, “I’m going to kill you.” Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in the juvenile facility. After the first half year the mother of the slain child went to visit his killer. He had been living on the streets before the killing, and she was the only visitor he’d had. For a time they talked, and when she left, she gave him some money for cigarettes. Then she started step-by-step to visit him more regularly, bringing food and small gifts. Near the end of his three-year sentence she asked him what he would be doing when he got out. He was confused and very uncertain, so she offered to set him up with a job at a friend’s company. Then she inquired about where he would live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. For eight months he lived there, ate her food, and worked at the job. Then one evening she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and waited. Then she started, “Do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you?” “I sure do, ma’am,” he replied. “Well, I did,” she went on. “I did not want the boyRead more at location 1140
who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That’s why I started to visit you and bring you things. That’s why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. That’s how I set about changing you. And that old boy, he’s gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if you’ll stay here. I’ve got room, and I’d like to adopt you if you let me.” And she became the mother of her son’s killer, the mother he never had. Our own story mayRead more at location 1153
In order to work with these common hindrances, we must learn to identify them clearly. The first is desire, the wanting mind. The second is its opposite which is aversion—dislike, resistance, judgment, anger, and fear; all those mental states in which we push away or reject our experience. The next is sleepiness, dullness, and lethargy (also forms of resistance to experience); and the fourth is its opposite: agitation and restlessness of mind. The fifth is doubt, the voice in the mind that says, “This breath practice is boring and dull. What good is it?” Or “I can’t do it. It is too hard, I am too restless, it is the wrong day to meditate. I should wait until tomorrow. Maybe I should do something a little more entertaining like Sufi dancing.”Read more at location 1450
When we become skillful at being mindful of these hindrances and look carefully and closely, we find that no state of mind, no feeling, no emotion actually lasts more than fifteen or thirty seconds before it is replaced by some other one. But we must look really closely to see this. We might be angry, and then, if we name it—“angry . . . angry”—and observe this state with patient attention, then we soon discover it is no longer anger, it has now turned into resentment. The resentment is there for a little while and then it turns into self-pity. Then we observe the self-pity and it turns into grief or despair and we observe the despair for a little while and it turns into self-justification, and then that turns back into anger. If we look, we see that the mind is constantly changing. Mindfulness teaches us about impermanence, movement, and how there’s no need to identify with any emotional or mental state.Read more at location 1480
IN THE EARLY 1970S I collected teachings from twelve of the most highly regarded meditation masters in Thailand and Burma who were teaching various forms of insight meditation or vipassana practice. This material became my first book, Living Buddhist Masters. The twelve styles in this book represented just a fraction of the fifty or a hundred ways that I know of to do vipassana. In many cases these masters did not agree with one another on the best way to practice. Sometimes the styles were diametrically opposed to one another. In laying out Living Buddhist Masters, I deliberately contrasted the teachings, so that the chapter of one great master, who emphasized meditation on the body as the best way to attain enlightenment, was next to that of another enlightened master, who said the only way to get liberated is to meditate on the mind. I did this so people would understand that there are different skillful means for cultivating the factors of enlightenment and coming to liberation. Any practice that cultivates mindfulness, wise effort, investigation, joy, concentration, calm, equanimity, and compassion will bring one to liberation, and there are many ways to do that. They are each part of a mandala, a sacred wheel that contains distinct segments all leading to the center, all contributing to the whole.Read more at location 2313
On another occasion I made a resolution to myself, “May a deep understanding of anicca (impermanence) arise.” And all of a sudden my attention went to the bald top of my head. I thought, “This is odd.” What came into consciousness is all the hair that I’m losing. I thought, This is a funny response to this resolution. And spontaneously my attention slowly scanned down to my ears, where I’m losing hearing, and then it went to my nose, and started sweeping down through my body. As it went to my nose, I could feel my history of years of allergies and nasal surgery. And then it went to the fillings in my teeth, and then it went to a bad vertebra in my neck, and then down to my lungs, where I’ve had pneumonia. Then it went to where I had had an appendectomy and some lower-back problems, and it scanned down through my old runner’s knees, and by the time it was done, the falling apart of my body was palpable throughout it. I had no idea this undeniable insight into impermanence was going to come in this form.Read more at location 2425
FRUIT FALLS FROM A TREE naturally when ripe. After due time in spiritual life, the heart, like fruit, begins to mature and sweeten. Our practice shifts from the green hard growth of seeking, developing, and improving ourselves to a resting in mystery. It shifts from reliance on form to a resting in the heart. One young woman who had struggled greatly in the early years of her practice in the face of family difficulties and the fundamentalist church to which her parents belonged wrote, “My parents hate me when I’m a Buddhist, but they love me when I’m a buddha.”Read more at location 2449
The mature heart is not perfectionistic: it rests in compassion for our being instead of in ideals of the mind. Nonidealistic spirituality does not seek a perfect world; it does not seek to perfect ourselves, our bodies, our personalities. It is not romantic about teachers or enlightenment-clinging images of the immense purity of some special being out there. Thus, it does not seek to gain or attain in spiritual life, but only to love and be free.Read more at location 2479
The frustration of seeking perfection is illustrated by a story of the holy fool Mullah Nasrudin. One day in the marketplace he encountered an old friend who was about to get married. This friend asked the Mullah whether he had ever considered marriage. Nasrudin replied that years ago he had wanted to marry and had set out to find the perfect woman. First he traveled to Damascus, where he found a perfectly gracious and beautiful woman but discovered she was lacking a spiritual side. Then his travels took him farther to Esfahān, where he met a woman who was deeply spiritual yet comfortable in the world and beautiful as well, but unfortunately they did not communicate well together. “Finally in Cairo I found her,” he said, “she was the ideal woman, spiritual, gracious, and beautiful, at ease in the world, perfect in every way.” “Well,” asked the friend, “did you then marry her?” “No,” answered the Mullah wryly, “unfortunately, she was looking for the perfect man.”Read more at location 2483
“The problem with the word patience,” said Zen master Suzuki Roshi, “is that it implies we are waiting for something to get better, we are waiting for something good that will come. A more accurate word for this quality is constancy, a capacity to be with what is true moment after moment, to discover enlightenment one moment after another.” Patience means understanding that what we seek is always here.Read more at location 2545
First we must beware of sectarianism. The history of Buddhism unfortunately contains a great deal of sectarian pain. Zen masters put down other Zen masters. Lamas defend the turf of their own Tibetan sects, waging spiritual—if not actual—warfare with one another. The Sri Lankans or Burmese or Thais denigrate one another’s practice. Buddhism has become divided into greater, lesser, and other numerous vehicles. This sectarianism has existed since the time of the Buddha himself. From the day he died, sects began springing up based on different aspects of the dharma. Out of clinging, these sects and lineages have fought with one another and continue to do so to this day.Read more at location 3621
As the third Zen Patriarch put it, “Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. There is one dharma, not many.” Or as contemporary Buddhist poet Tom Savage writes, “Greater vehicle, lesser vehicle, all vehicles will be towed at owner’s expense.”Read more at location 3626
I understand it this way:Read more at location 3700
I now discover myself teaching what Suzuki Roshi called “Hinayana practice with a Mahayana mind.” In this spirit, my teaching has shifted from an emphasis on effort and striving to one of opening and healing. So many students come to practice wounded, conditioned to closing off and hating parts of themselves. For them, striving perpetuates their problems. Instead, we now begin by awakening the heart of compassion and inspiring a courage to live the truth as a deep motivation for practice. This heart-centered motivation draws together loving-kindness, healing, courage, and clarity in an interdependent way. It brings alive the compassion of the Buddha from the very first step.Read more at location 3714
we had the privilege of a visit to the Insight Meditation Society by His Holiness, the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism. His Holiness the Karmapa came during one of our three-month retreats. He sat on a gilded throne in our meditation hall, surrounded by 150 yogis and students to whom he gave a dharma talk and ceremonial blessing. Our Indian teacher Dipa Ma Barua was also visiting IMS at the time. Because she did not speak English, as the Karmapa’s Tibetan was being translated into English by his translators, that English was in turn translated into Bengali by hers. After hearing a wonderful talk by the Karmapa on the Buddhist four noble truths and on the essential teachings of compassion and emptiness, Dipa Ma turned to me, put her hand on my knee, and exclaimed with delight, “He’s a Buddhist!” As an Indian Buddhist master she had been going to the Buddha’s enlightenment temple in Bodh Gaya for twenty years. There she lived right across the street from a Tibetan temple, had seen tens of thousands of Tibetan pilgrims and Tibetan lamas at the Bodhi tree in India during the many years of her practice, yet she had never heard their teachings in translation and had never really understood that, like her, they too were Buddhists.Read more at location 3724