Joy is really the simplest form of gratitude.
People often ask me how Buddhists answer the question: ‘Does God exist?’ The other day I was walking along the river...I was suddenly aware of the sun, shining through the bare trees. Its warmth, its brightness, and all this completely free, completely gratuitous. Simply there for us to enjoy. And without my knowing it, completely spontaneously, my two hands came together, and I realized that I was making gassho. And it occurred to me that this is all that matters: that we can bow, take a deep bow. Just that. Just that.
We were born with silence, and as we grew up we lost the silence and we were filled with words. We lived in our hearts, and as time passed we moved into our heads. Now the reverse of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from the head back to the heart, from words back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence.
The Comforter came to me:
"With joy are you ever at home
in my Heart,
as I have lived in yours.
You are mine; I belong to You...
Who will enter the Heart of Love?"
Silence is the beautiful fruit of prayer. We must learn not only the silence of the mouth, but also the silence of the heart, of the eyes, of the ears and of the mind, which I call the five silences. Say it and memorize it on your five fingers.
In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope...the hidden spring of mercy deep within us is released in that touch and flows out from the center...In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.
In the attitudes of silence, the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after truth.
The silence that is experienced in being quiet and alone is not the deepest and most satisfying silence to be had. The heart's desire is for the Eternal, a level of silence that is penetrating in its power to draw forth the secret communication of the soul. Here, we discover that silence speaks and we learn how poor we are when we do not abide in this dimension. In this great silence, our being finds its roots in God, is nurtured inwardly, and gradually expands into a form of life that is itself eternal.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
In order to follow inner wisdom, we have to first know it. In order to know it, we have to hear it; to hear it, we have to be still. . . . I still have on my desk the conch shell I picked up at the beach on my second day of silence. Listen, it continues to remind me. Listen to what you can hear when you are being still.
In the sanctuary of silence, we are surrounded by that clarity of mind and heart that allows us to walk without fear.
Close the door of words
that the window of your heart may open.
To see what cannot be seen
turn your eyes inward
and listen, in silence.
The gentle strains of great and noble Truths pass through the soul in every fleeting moment; and had we but a wish to hear, coupled with the will to be silent for a spell, we would soon detect the sound of our own eternity sounding out in that silence to which we then would hold so dear.
It seems all too easy for modern life to become one continuous rush tainted with frustration and a feeling that there is never enough time to do anything with care and sensitivity. So it is a very useful practice just to take one's time. The truth is that if we can take pleasure in what we do and be mindful, we will find we have more time. Our relationship with time itself can change. Time becomes full of life rather than second by second stealing our life away.
Return a culture to a sense of sacred time
and you will find that you can live
in a world that renews itself.
Early morning dew
sparkling for a span of time
silently absorbed.
Have you also learned that secret from the river — that there is no such thing as time? ...the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the water-fall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and...the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.
Don't worry.
How many roads did Saint Augustine follow
before he became Saint Augustine?
Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. Why? Because it is all we ever have.
When you center the inner realities, your sense of time, depth, and truth changes...Don't let the shallowness and speed of daily life cheapen your inner wisdom.
My name is I AM...
When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets,
it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WAS.
When you live in the future with its problems and fears,
it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WILL BE.
When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I am here.
My name is I AM.
When, living in the present in profound attentiveness, we experience "timeless moments" of radical present and Presence, we come very near to God.
God requires us to be oriented from moment to moment to what is in the timeless, and not to be stuck with our thoughts and fantasies of blaming and self-pity and the belief that the past is responsible for our present problems. What is needed is to understand life in the dimension of the timeless, where everything becomes meaningful and self-revealing.
The highest point of life may be to live in a state of pure flow, a "now-state" without past or future, in which prediction and control are not factors—a state of continual, instant-by-instant adaption to the unknown.
For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness.
There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.
We find our own origins in the ancient arts. Loss of the ancient means loss of the realization of the timeless in the present time, whenever an old tree is cut, whenever an old landmark is razed. When the place of one's personal roots are destroyed the roots of the individual wither.
We cannot separate awareness and compassion. Awareness without compassion is sterile and lacks depth, while compassion without awareness is blind and unable to respond creatively to real situations. Awareness married to compassion allows a real relationship to develop. It is only through understanding, through a feeling of relationship to the world, that we can go beyond the selfishness that characterizes so much of the modern world.
We can only care for others if we are cared for... Caring is not something sentimental; it means giving time, listening, affirming, understanding and encouraging. It means also challenging and evaluating, when necessary....To care for people does not mean to flatter them; it is to help them discover their own worth and their gifts, in order to grow in truth, and to accept their brokenness and shadow sides...
Compassion is the only way forward if we are to be well. Compassion for those who do not know that they are beloved. Compassion for the children and creatures who are suffering today. Compassion even for the people and nations who wrong us. Revenge has no future, apart from bitterness and the multiplication of wrong. As Mahatma Gandhi taught his people in the midst of his nation’s struggle for justice and liberation, the philosophy of revenge, of an eye for an eye, will only make the whole world blind. If what we are committed to is transformation, then the only way forward is compassion, not revenge. A passion that is with and for the other as well as oneself, a passion that is with us and for the other as oneself.
From each heart is a window to other hearts
They are not separated like two bodies,
Just as, even though two lamps are not joined,
Their light is united in a single ray.
Do you know that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of humankind, animals and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain?
Learning to listen to our bodies, emotions and thoughts gives us the ability to recognize and deal with irrational states of mind, seeing them for what they really are, and learning to bless them and embrace them before letting them go. Mastery of our emotional and intellectual behaviors must begin with forgiving ourselves and others. Harboring old grievances and resentments is a sure way of creating negative energies which will produce negative outcomes. Knowing how to heal old wounds in positive ways and moving into the Light is an important lesson in the mastery of our behaviors.
The stripping of pettiness from life in those early days of the war, the sense of unity and mutual help among all sorts and conditions of people, was a thing no one who was in England at that time could ever forget. There was an atmosphere of forgiveness everywhere, that most rare of human qualities...such moments reveal the beauty hidden in the most unlikely persons and affirm the truth, "what a piece of work is man, is woman!"
"Edward," she said softly. "Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.
Where love is strong, forgiveness can be there for us before there is any movement on our part. Something special happens when forgiveness is given fulfillment by its recognition and acceptance. Sorrow and understanding can be involved in healing. The words needed may be, "I’m sorry," and it may take time before it is clear that the words are real. But forgiveness is given, not earned. Healing may take time; the forgiveness is gift. Where there is love, the gift will not be withheld.
Compassion, even towards one's enemies, is a sign of nobleness and spiritual perfection.
It is no longer good enough to cry peace—we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace.
The world is hungry for goodness and recognizes it when it sees it...When we glimpse it in people we applaud them for it. We long to be just a little like them. Through them we let the world’s pain into our hearts, and we find compassion.
There is no progress in prayer without progress in faith, a purification of faith. And this entails the removal of all the props which depend on human endeavor, human reasoning, signs and the rest. It is the naked faith which is a terrifying experience and yet is the meeting point ultimately between God and ourselves in the depth of our being. This experience of the purification of faith is not normally one which comes early in the spiritual life. We must learn to wait.