Vipassanā samādhi develops out of continuous awareness, along with right view and right attitude. Samādhi arises and there is peace when there is continuous awareness, with the right attitude and right view. What is unique about this? Should there be desire for a peaceful mind state? Should there be aversion to agitation? When there is a cause, there is an effect. Because there are conditions for contact, there is contact.
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 90)
(photo by Hor Tuck Loon)
Reblogged from dhammaeverywhere with 2 notes
"
Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.
Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.
Rumi (via awakeinthedream)
Reblogged from awakeinthedream with 31 notes
"Mindfulness reflections are skillful means the Buddha developed for investigating experience, for breaking down the illusions we hold, for breaking through the ignorance we grasp at, for freeing ourselves from form, the limited and the unsatisfactory […] I encourage people just to trust themselves with mindfulness and awareness.
Often meditation is taught with this sense that one has to get something or get rid of something. But that only increases the existing idea of ‘I am somebody who has to become something that I am not, and has to get rid of my bad traits, my faults, my defilements.’ If we never see through that, it will be a hopeless task. The best we will ever do under those circumstances is maybe modify our habit-tendencies, make ourselves nicer people and be happier in the world ― and that isn’t to be despised, either ― but the point of the Buddha’s teaching is liberation."
Ajahn Sumedho, Trust in Your Awareness
Read more from Ajahn Sumedho, thanks to Buddhism Now.
(via sharanam)"What is to give light must endure burning."
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. (via parabola-magazine)
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"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson (via dhammanovice)
Reblogged from dhammanovice with 42 notes
"Face it - learn it - get it!"
Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Retreat in Czech Republic April/May 2011 (via dhammaeverywhere)
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It's like this?: Learning to love by loving
“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.”
– SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES
“In learning to love, we start where we are – somewhat selfish, somewhat self-centered, but with a deep desire to relate…
Reblogged from dhammanovice with 10 notes
"Clinging is lobha - interest is widsom."
Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Retreat in Czech Republic April/May 2011 (via dhammaeverywhere)
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"Creating without claiming, doing without taking credit, guiding without interfering, this is primal virtue."
Lao Tzu (via commondense)
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Why is it that the Dhamma and the practice don’t follow yogis out to their daily lives? Why don’t yogis sustain the desire to meditate continuously and consistently? It is because many yogis come to rest instead of coming to learn to be skillful in growing understanding. A yogi whose practice is aimed at developing calm may stop practicing wholeheartedly when she reaches that state. On the other hand, a yogi who practices to understand the truth will not rest until she has understood thoroughly. If yogis became skillful in developing understanding, then they could use this practice anywhere.
In fact, when the mind is in a calm, steady state, it is in a position to do dhamma investigation. It’s ready to practice with intelligence and ready to study and learn about what is happening. If we don’t realize that this is the way to proceed at this point, the greedy mind will just step in and enjoy this calm state, which is exactly what many yogis do!
Why are we meditating? Do we meditate to calm the mind down? Or do we practice to understand things as they are? Tranquility is not an end goal but a side-effect in mindfulness meditation. When we understand dhamma nature very deeply, tranquility comes as an inherent part of this wisdom.
—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 62)
(photo by Indonesian Yogi, Retreat with SUT, BrahmaViharaArama, Bali July 2011)
Reblogged from dhammaeverywhere with 1 note
No experience out there is better than the present experience.
(photo by Hor Tuck Loon)
Reblogged from dhammaeverywhere with 23 notes
Vimala Thakar on Meditation
“This awareness of the so called outward and the inward movements of life, is meditation. The simultaneous awareness of the total movement is meditation. If I am aware of the nature of my reactions, and movement of my reactions, naturally that awareness will result in freedom from the reaction. I cannot stop the reaction, because the reactions have been rooted in the subconscious, in the unconscious. I cannot prevent, I cannot renounce, I cannot check them. But if I am aware, simultaneously of the objective challenge, the subjective reactions and the causes of these reactions, then it results in freedom. Then the momentum of reaction will not carry me over with it, but I will be ahead of my reactions. I will not be a victim of my reactions, but I will see them as I see the objective challenge. That for me is meditation. All inclusive attention while moving in life. Meditation does not involve any mental activity at all.”
Mutation of Mind
“…Minimizing in daily life the frequency, the duration and the field of mental activity and living in silence, acting out of that silence is meditation. This meditation, this silence, has got a tremendous momentum of its own…You do not have to do a thing. You are not there: the ego, the mind, is not there. What happens in that silence? How does that silence move? It is something to be experimented with…”
Mutation of Mind
“Meditation is watching the movement of mind in relationship. If you try to force the mind into silence by withdrawing from activity, you will never understand what silence is…There is a great beauty when one discovers what silence in action is. Meditation is a new approach to total life, it does not demand of you any isolation.”
Mutation of Mind
“…Meditation is a state of total freedom from movement, to be there, and then to move into time and space, words and speech, feelings and emotions, to move into them out of the totality, out of the wholeness.”
Why Meditation?
“Freedom or liberation is not something to be cultivated. It is not different. It is not different from the bondage. One has to look at it, understand it and that very understanding explodes into freedom. They are not two different events, and we have to look at these not in isolation, not sitting somewhere in the corner of a room, but from morning till night to be in the state of watchfulness, in the state of observation, without condemning what is coming up or without accepting what is coming up. Just observing it, seeing the speed, the momentum, the electronic speed with which thoughts come, watching the intervals between the two thoughts.”
Totality in Essence
“Meditation is something pertaining to the whole being and the whole life. Either you live in it or you do not live in it. In other words, it is related to everything physical and psychological… Thus, from the small area of mental activity, we have brought meditation to a vast field of consciousness, where it gets related to the way you sit or stand, the way you gesticulate or articulate throughout the day. Whether you want it or not, the inner state of your being gets expressed in your behaviour… This co-relation of meditation to the total way of living is the first requirement on the path of total transformation.”
Blossoms of Friendship
Finding Real Words: Free and Easy
Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present in relaxation
and letting go.Don’t strain yourself;
there is nothing to do.
Whatever arises in the mind
has no real importance at all,
because it has no reality whatsoever.
Don’t become…
Reblogged from findingrealwords with 13 notes
"Through much of the early training of insight meditation, to ‘be mindful’ is the instruction of choice. Most of our spiritual effort goes into trying to remember to be mindful throughout the day. A constant theme of remembering and forgetting plays forth through most of the early years of practice, and here the image of a pump comes to mind. The effort needed to be mindful is like the burden of pumping water; when the effort of pumping stops, so does the water. A strong sense of despondency can accompany this effort because it is impossible for us to continuously remember anything. Though this may be a difficult insight, it is actually an important discovery if we intend to step out of the ‘doing’ of practice and partake in the freedom within awareness.
The constant inquiry among meditators is how to maintain awareness, but the question is being considered from the wrong end of the suffering continuum. The anxiety associated with the continuation of awareness is suffering, and becoming more worried about how we practice does not move us in a wise direction. We can begin to see how our personal struggle to be mindful is misplaced when we observe the sense of self arising within our effort to maintain mindfulness. The harder we try in this, the more forgetful we become. Since the sense of self is the embodiment of the absence of awareness, forgetting to observe is inevitable as we try harder to be aware. The problem of how to be mindful is actually resolved not through strenuous effort but by relaxing, allowing, and observing what is already here. Within the framework of relaxation, the sense of self has a diminishing power center, making space for awareness to be revealed."
Rodney Smith, From Thought to Stillness (via sharanam)
