My Spiritual Quotes » buddhism

Lama Yeshe Quotes on Happiness – When the chocolate runs out

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:50:07 +0000

We love chocolate. Perhaps so much so that on some level we may believe, “As long as I have chocolate, I’ll be happy.” This is the power of attachment at work. And based on this attachment, we create a chocolate-based philosophy and order our life prioritizing chocolate. But sometimes, we can’t get our hands on any chocolate. And when the chocolate disappears, we get nervous, upset: “Oh no! Now I’m unhappy!” But of course it’s not the absence of chocolate that’s making us unhappy; it’s our fixed ideas, and our misunderstanding the nature of chocolate. (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 1)

Chocolate comes, chocolate goes, chocolate disappears. (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 2)

The sense world alone cannot satisfy the human mind. (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 5)

Wherever you go, your dissatisfied mind is still there. (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 7)

Meditation explodes the belief that satisfaction depends on circumstances (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 8 )

If you think practicing the Dharma means simply learning new ideas, you’d be better off sucking a piece of candy. (When the Chocolate Runs Out, p. 37)

Related spiritual quotes pages

Chogyam Trungpa Quotes on Work, Sex and Money

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:07:26 +0000

Dharma teachings are not going to be romantic or beautiful – ho no! The teachings are going to be painful, even invoking paranoia. At the same time, we can work with the situation and find something creative in it.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 7

For many of us, regardless of our politics or our status in society, money is a private thing, sex is a private thing, and so is work. We don’t want to discuss them with others at all. We would like to find something transcendental that raises us above those situations. People don’t want anything to do with death either. Most of us still have the dualistic notion of death as bad and birth as good. That kind of notion is pervasive, and that is precisely why we need to talk about these subjects.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 9

There is a Tibetan saying that it is better not to begin things, but once you begin, you should finish properly.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 17

When you relate to situations directly and simply, you realize that body and mind have a very close relationship. Mind and body are one thing rather than separate. Body is mind, mind is body. The expressions of body are also constantly the expressions of mind. Work, which is an expression of everyday life, brings the body and mind into play equally. We do not have to develop a special philosophical attitude in order to make our work spiritual, even if our activity appears to have nothing to do with spirituality.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 21

The popular, confused notion of compassion suggests a certain idea of charity, which is trying to be kind because you feel you are well off and therefore you should be kind to others who are not well off. You might go off to underdeveloped nations or join the Peace Corps. Your country is wealthy, but those other countries are not. The people are illiterate, so you will teach them how to read and write and how to manage things. In this approach, you actually look down on those people.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 31

Real compassion is not a matter of “I would like to make this person happy by making the person fit into my idea of happiness”; rather, it is a matter of actually seeing that a certain person needs help. You put yourself at the disposal of that person. You just get into a relationship with that person and see where that leads. That is a more demanding and am ore generous approach than following your expectation that the person should end up thus and such a way.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 31

In working with others, the approach of genuine spirituality is to just do it, just help. If you’re doing it unskillfully, you’ll be pushed back. A direct message is there always, unless you are dreaming, in which case you don’t receive any messages. But if you are relating with things directly, even with ambition, that’s okay. There will be messages coming toward you automatically. This could be called genuine mystical experience.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 32

You are good; fundamentally, you are healthy. Moreover, that particular health is capable of accomodating your badness as well as your goodness. When you’re good, you’re not particularly bashful about your goodness, and when you’re bad, you’re not particularly shocked by that either. These are simply your attributes. When you begin to accept both aspects of your being as energy, as part of the perspective of your view of yourself, then you are connecting with the fundamental goodness, which can accommodate all of these energies as part of one basic being.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 35

If you do not feel every step you take, then your pattern of mind becomes full of chaos and you begin to wonder where these problems are coming from. They just spring out of nowhere, because they are a signal that attention is needed.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 44,45

Particularly people on the spiritual path are in danger of not being able to persevere in the work situation. They can be particularly apt at finding excuses not to work and very clever in developing the practice of laziness. The moment they don’t feel like doing something, the appropriate spiritual quotation comes to mind.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 93, 94

Repression is a very unskilled way of dealing with passion. It is not that there is something wrong with the traditional teachings, but you take them the wrong way. If you panic, if you feel terribly shy about our passion, this doesn’t let you see it. It doesn’t let you examine it. If you do see it, you realize that physically carrying out your passion is not the point. Acting on it seems to be a secondary matter. What is important is seeing the passion clearly.

In the Buddhist monastic tradition, celibacy is a powerful way of dealing with desire, not by suppressing passion, but by examining the mental aspect of it. In the Buddhist tradition altogether, rather than suppressing any desire that comes into your mind, you look at it. you have to become familiar with the desires; then the need to express them physically automatically wears out. You see that the physical expression is no more than an extension of the desire itself – you see the childish as well as the chaotic quality of the expression.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 119, 120

Whenever anything irritates us, it’s trying to communicate with us. Usually we are looking for an answer rather than trying to communicate with irritation. There is sanity operating, but usually we don’t try to learn from that at all. We try to do something with that irritation rather than just relate to it.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 212, 213

Working with money is always part of the psychology or the philosophy of a situation. So we need basic criteria for working with money. Working with money requires discipline to know how much money you need for a week, how much money is required to live for a day or a month. Living in any society requires this process of discipline. We have to work along with the pattern of society. In that context, it seems that a relationship with money is necessary. We have to actually face the whole problem of money as it is.

Chogyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real life on the Path of Mindfulness, p. 171

Related spiritual quotes pages

Shunryu Suzuki Zazen Meditation Quotes

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:50:36 +0000

When you practice zazen you should not try to attain anything. You should just sit in the complete calmness of your mind and not rely on anything. Just keep your body straight without leaning over or against something. To keep your body straight means not to rely on anything. In this way, physically and mentally, you will obtain complete calmness. But to rely on something or try to do something in zazen is dualistic and not complete calmness.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 113

If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition p. 99

Zazen practice is a direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 5

When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 17, 18

When you say, “whatever I do is Buddha nature, so it doesn’t matter what I do, and there is no need to practice zazen,” that is already a dualistic understanding of our everyday life. If it really does not matter, there is no need for you even to say so. As long as you are concerned about what you do, that is dualistic.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 26

For the beginner, practice without effort is not true practice. For the beginner, the practice needs great effort.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p.27

You become discouraged with your practice when your practice has been idealistic. You have some gaining idea in your practice, and it is not pure enough. It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice. At that time, forgetting all about your mistake and renewing your way, you can resume your original practice. This is a very important point.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 58

Another mistake will be to practice for the sake of the joy you find in it. Actually, when your practice is involved in a feeling of joy, it is not in very good shape either. Of course it is not poor practice, but compared to the true practice it is not so good. In Hinayana Buddhism, practice is classified in four ways. The best way is to just do it without having any joy in it, not even physical joy. This way is just to do it, forgetting your physical and mental feeling, forgetting all about yourself in your practice. This is the fourth stage, the highest stage. The next highest stage is to have just physical joy in your practice. At this stage you find some pleasure in practice, and you will practice because of the pleasure you find in it. In the second stage you have both mental and physical joy, or good feeling. These two middle stages are stages in which you practice zazen because you feel good in your practice. The first stage is when you have no thinking and no curiosity in your practice. These four stages also apply to Mahayana practice, and the highest is just to practice it.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, 40th anniversary edition, p. 59

Related spiritual quotes pages

Short Pema Chodron Buddhism Quotes

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:28:20 +0000

Life has taught me the wisdom of moving toward what scares me.

Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.

Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have so we might as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.

From the new Pema Chodron Fan Site

Related spiritual quotes pages

Albert Low zen quotes

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:27:49 +0000

The vow of the Bodhisattva is that she will not go into Nirvana until every single suffering being has entered Nirvana. One has to understand what this means. Our awakening is not a personal triumph. We do not have to win a spiritual sprint. We are one mind. Awakening is to penetrate more and more deeply into this truth. The world is alive. And as long as there is suffering then this living whole is shattered. Whether it is my suffering or the suffering of another, when seen from the perspective of the Bodhisattva makes no difference, because, seen from this perspective there is no ‘me’ or ‘another.’ In the Diamond Sutra, “Although the Bodhisattva saves all sentient beings, there are no sentient beings to save.”

From an article on a Zen Koan

The heart of our practice is perplexity, wonder, care, concern, in the face of our situation. One only has to pick up a newspaper to realize the truth of Shakespeare’s words, “what a tangled web these mortals weave.” How contradictory our lives are; how full of pettiness and greatness, stupidity and wisdom.

A Fountain of Miracles

Go where the heart of the problem lies.Our practice is all about seeing into the conditional nature of the world, me and God. We are not people or things, among other people or other things in the world. It is illusory to look on this structure as absolute. It is conditional, it is relative, it is useful. It is useful in the same way a filing system is useful. The filing system does not itself impinge in any way on the material that is filed. It does not alter in any way the letters, correspondence, forms or invoices. It is the melting down of this structure that our practice is about.

Go where the heart of the problem lies

Life is a constant creation. It is a moment by moment, instant by instant creation. I don’t mean by this that it is a set of discrete creations, it is not like that. But nevertheless, this spontaneity is constantly arising. And it is within this that is our freedom.

A Non-Buddhist Questions the Buddha

Often, when doing a spiritual practice one comes face to face with the desert, a feeling of being abandoned, a feeling of dryness and an endless sense of nothing to look forward to. At its most intense it is not a feeling to which one can give a name. At first this is very painful and one has a strong tendency to want to stir things up, try to make something happen, to try this, do that… But one has entered this desert because one has let go of the various ways one has used in the past to entertain oneself. These ways have, for the moment at least, come to an end. It is now possible for a much deeper unity to manifest, a unity that is not dependent upon an integration from outside.

Albert Low on Pain

More about Albert Low. More about Zen Buddhism

Related spiritual quotes pages

Buddhist quotes about rebirth, reincarnation and karma

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:20:05 +0000

Only the quality, that is the social surrounding, the physical appearance and the mental abilities of a person are fixed by the deeds of his previous existences, but in noway his actions.

Karma in Buddhism, Hans Wolfgang Schuman

If you see that other people are suffering, and you’re in a position to help, you focus not on their karmic past but your karmic opportunity in the present: Some day you may find yourself in the same predicament that they’re in now, so here’s your opportunity to act in the way you’d like them to act toward you when that day comes.

It’s not about fatalism, Bhikkhu Thanissaro

In Buddhism, rebirth is part of the continuous process of change. In fact, we are not only reborn at the time of death, we are born and reborn at every moment.

Fundamentals in Buddhism

Related spiritual quotes pages

Buddha quotes on karma

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:02:49 +0000

These quotes are the closest we can get to the Buddha: they’re from the Tipitaka, the ancient Pali Buddhist scriptures. I’ve replaced the Pali ‘kamma’ with the more common Sanskrit ‘Karma’. The two words mean the same thing.

Monks, these four types of karma have been directly realized, verified, & made known by me. Which four? There is karma that is dark with dark result. There is karma that is bright with bright result. There is karma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result. There is karma that is neither dark nor bright with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of karma.

Anguttara Nikaya,AN 4.235, PTS: A ii 235,Ariyamagga Sutta: The Noble Path,translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Monks, these three are causes for the origination of [karmic] actions. Which three? Greed is a cause for the origination of actions. Aversion is a cause for the origination of actions. Delusion is a cause for the origination of actions.

Anguttara Nikaya, AN 3.33, PTS: A i 134, Thai III.34; BJT III.34, Nidana Sutta

Student, beings are owners of karmas, heirs of karmas, they have karmas as their progenitor, karmas as their kin, karmas as their homing-place. It is karmas that differentiate beings according to inferiority and superiority.

Majjhima Nikaya 135: The Shorter Exposition of Kamma

So, Ananda, there is karma that is incapable (of good result) and appears incapable (of good result); there is karma that is incapable (of good result) and appears capable (of good result); there is karma that is capable (of good result) and appears capable (of good result); there is karma that is capable (of good result) and appears incapable (of good result).

Majjhima Nikaya 136: The Great Exposition of Kamma (Mahakammavibhanga Sutta)

Monks, a fool is characterized by his/her actions. A wise person is characterized by his/her actions. It is through the activities of one’s life that one’s discernment shines.

Anguttara Nikaya, AN 3.2, PTS: A i 102, Lakkhana Sutta: Characterized (by Action)

These Buddha quotes on karma explained.

Related spiritual quotes pages

Theravada Buddhist quotes about happiness

My spiritual quotes Katinka — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:43:23 +0000

There are a lot of sites online that share Buddha quotes. Unfortunately, many of those quotes cannot be found in the Buddhist scriptures, let alone in the oldest Buddhist scriptures which are most likely to contain the Buddha’s word. In trying to find quotes about happiness in Buddhism, I naturally started with the oldest Buddhism. However, it is mostly concerned, not with people becoming happy, but with people overcoming suffering. Because the quotes are from more than 2000 years ago, I give my interpretation and summary after each quote.

For instance, in the Samyutta Nikaya V (199-200) the Buddha is reported to have said:

And what is the faculty of Wisdom? Herein the Ariyan disciple has wisdom. He is endowed with wisdom leading to the knowledge of rise and fall, Ariyan, piercing, leading rightly to the extinction of suffering.

(Buddhist texts throughout the Ages, Edward Conze, p. 51)

[Rephrase in modern language, all my own: Wisdom is the knowledge of how things change, rise and fall. This insight will rightly lead to the extinction of sorrow and unhappiness.]

Many so called Buddha quotes are really summaries of long paragraphs in Buddhist texts. For instance Majjhima Nikaya I, 36-38, already condensed by Conze (p. 52, 53):

And what, monks, are the defilements of the mind? Greed and covetousness, malevolence, anger, malice, hypocrisy, spite, envy, stinginess, deceit, treachery, obstinacy, impetuosity, arrogance, pride, conceit, indolence. If a monk thinks and kn0ws that these are defilements of the mind and gets rid of them, he becomes possessed of unwavering confidence in the Buddha and thinks: ‘Thus indeed is he the Lord, Arahant, perfect Buddha … a Buddha a Lord.’ And he becomes possessed of unwavering confidence in the Dhamma and thinks: ‘Dhamma is well taught by the Lord, it is thoroughly seen here and now, it is timeless, inviting all to come-and-see, leading onwards [to nirvana], to be understood by the wise each for himself.’ And he becomes possessed of unwavering confidence in the Order and thinks: ‘The Lord’s Order of disciples is of good conduct, upright, of wise conduct, of dutiful conduct, that is to say the four pairs of men, the eight persons. [This refers to four stages on the Path, and those who have attained to the fruits of them] This Order of the Lord’s disciples is worthy of alms, hospitality, offerings and reverence, it is a matchless field of merit for the world.’

At this stage there is for him giving up, renouncing, rejecting, getting rid of, forsaking. When he thinks that he has unwavering confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma and the Order, he acquires knowledge of Dhamma and the delight connected with Dhamma; rapture is born from that delight; being rapturous, his body is impassible; this being so, joy is felt, and in consequence the mind is well concentrated.

This can be summed up as follows: Those who realize the defilements of the mind, will get rid of them. Getting rid of them they will become aware of the blessing of being free of them. Feeling that blessing, they will respect the Buddha and the Buddhist Sangha (the monks, the order) all the more. The result will be letting go of everything that can be let go of. They will realize their faith in the Buddha and the Sangha and this will lead to knowledge of Dhamma (Buddhist teachings) and the delight that comes from that. Rapture follows delight. Being in raptures, the body is no longer a source of distraction. This will lead to joy and a concentrated mind.

If that isn’t happiness, I don’t know what is… However it’s a very different kind of happiness than what can be found in ordinary life.

Pleasant feeling is one dead end, painful feeling the other, feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant is in the middle, craving is the sempstress, for craving sews one … (Anguttara Nikaya 3, 399-401 ; Conze p. 73)

In other words: neither painful feelings, nor pleasant ones are any help. Stay in the middle. Craving is the worst though: it binds one.