Joseph GoldsteinAll things arise when the appropriate conditions are present, and all things pass away as conditions change. Behind the process, there is no “self” who is running the show.
Mahamudra Vision ~ Nagarjuna
NagarjunaHomage to Manjusrikumarabhuta!
1. I bow down to the all-powerful Buddha
Whose mind is free of attachment,
Who in his compassion and wisdom
Has taught the inexpressible.2. In truth there is no birth –
Then surely no cessation or liberation;
The Buddha is like the sky
And all beings have that nature.3. Neither Samsara nor Nirvana exist,
But all is a complex continuum
With an intrinsic face of void,
The object of ultimate awareness.4. The nature of all things
Appears like a reflection,
Pure and naturally quiescent,
With a non-dual identity of suchness.5. The common mind imagines a self
Where there is nothing at all,
And it conceives of emotional states –
Happiness, suffering, and equanimity.6. The six states of being in Samsara,
The happiness of heaven,
The suffering of hell,
Are all false creations, figments of mind.7. Likewise the ideas of bad action causing suffering,
Old age, disease and death,
And the idea that virtue leads to happiness,
Are mere ideas, unreal notions.8. Like an artist frightened
By the devil he paints,
The sufferer in Samsara
Is terrified by his own imagination.9. Like a man caught in quicksands
Thrashing and struggling about,
So beings drown
In the mess of their own thoughts.10. Mistaking fantasy for reality
Causes an experience of suffering;
Mind is poisoned by interpretation
Of consciousness of form.11. Dissolving figment and fantasy
With a mind of compassionate insight,
Remain in perfect awareness
In order to help all beings.12. So acquiring conventional virtue
Freed from the web of interpretive thought,
Insurpassable understanding is gained
As Buddha, friend to the world.13. Knowing the relativity of all,
The ultimate truth is always seen;
Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end
The flow is seen as Emptiness.14. So all samsara and nirvana is seen as it is –
Empty and insubstantial,
Naked and changeless,
Eternally quiescent and illumined.15. As the figments of a dream
Dissolve upon waking,
So the confusion of Samsara
Fades away in enlightenment.16. Idealising things of no substance
As eternal, substantial and satisfying,
Shrouding them in a fog of desire
The round of existence arises.17. The nature of beings is unborn
Yet commonly beings are conceived to exist;
Both beings and their ideas
Are false beliefs.18. It is nothing but an artifice of mind
This birth into an illusory becoming,
Into a world of good and evil action
With good or bad rebirth to follow.19. When the wheel of mind ceases to turn
All things come to an end.
So there is nothing inherently substantial
And all things are utterly pure.20. This great ocean of samsara,
Full of delusive thought,
Can be crossed in the boat Universal Approach.
Who can reach the other side without it?
Your natural face ~ Padmasambhava
PadmasambhavaLook into the awakened mind of your own awareness! It has neither form nor color, neither center nor edge. At first, it has no origin but is empty. Next, it has no dwelling place but is empty. At the end, it has no destination but is empty. This emptiness is not made of anything and is clear and cognizant. When you see this and recognize it, you know your natural face. You understand the nature of things. You have then seen the nature of mind, resolved the basic state of reality and cut through doubts about topics of knowledge.
Obey the nature of things ~ Sengcan
SengcanObey the nature of things
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden,
for everything is murky and unclear.
The burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?
The mind of letting go ~ Mingyur Rinpoche
Mingyur RinpocheGrasping and fixation arise from the mind, and therefore cannot be eliminated through body and speech alone. The mind of letting go has the capacity to cut the root of ego-clinging; the activity of letting go accumulates merit. And by letting go, we gain access to our own immense inner wealth, which has never been depleted. We begin to glimpse our own treasures, and this initiates the accumulation of wisdom.
Shouldering the Mahayana teachings ~ Longchenpa
LongchenpaYou must tame your own shortcomings and cultivate impartial pure perception, for a biased attitude will not let you shoulder the Mahayana teachings. Since all the sentient beings among the six classes in the three realms have without exception been your own parents, unless you make pure aspirations with ceaseless compassion and bodhicitta, you cannot open the jewel mine of altruistic actions. Unless you generate a devotion toward your kind guru exceeding even that of meeting the Buddha in person, you will not feel the warmth of blessings. Unless you genuinely receive the blessings, the seedlings of experience and realization will not sprout. Unless realization dawns from within, dry explanations and theories will not help you achieve the fruit of enlightenment.
The quest for a guru ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
Dzongsar Khyentse RinpocheBefore embarking on your search for a guru, your intentions should be clear. As with everything, motivation is of utmost importance. Why would you even want to have a guru?
At the very least, the quest for a guru should be fueled by a revulsion of worldly life. If not revulsion, then at least some understanding that success in worldly endeavors is not the ultimate answer. A step up from that motivation is genuine confidence in and attraction to the spiritual life and a desire to understand the truth. And even better is an attitude of a warrior wishing to understand the truth not only for himself but for the sake of all sentient beings.
For such a grandiose journey, you want to have a guide, a coach, someone who will show you how. Someone who will give you the support, who will correct you, who will pull the rug out from under your feet, and who will not let you go astray. That is the ideal motivation, which will immediately give you a good sense of what type of guru you should be looking for.
Without the steadiness of concentration ~ Joseph Goldstein
Joseph GoldsteinWithout 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.
One instant of love ~ Nagarjuna
NagarjunaEven three times a day to offer
Three hundred cooking pots of food
Does not match a portion of the merit
In one instant of love.Though [through love] you are not liberated
You will attain the eight good qualities of love —
Gods and humans will be friendly,
Even [non-humans] will protect you,You will have mental pleasures and many [physical] pleasures,
Poison and weapons will not harm you,
Without striving you will attain your aims,
And be reborn in the world of Brahma.
The mind’s essential peace ~ Sengcan
SengcanWhen the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
Trusting ourselves completely ~ Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu SuzukiIn short, we can say that we trust ourselves completely, without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong. Because we respect ourselves, because we put faith in our life, we sit.
The unity of emptiness ~ Sengcan
SengcanThings are objects because there is a subject or mind;
and the mind is a subject because there are objects.
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
Our own wellspring of compassion ~ Joseph Goldstein
Joseph GoldsteinThe tremendous danger is that this belief – that genuine happiness comes only from pleasant feelings – becomes a strong motivation to stay closed to anything unpleasant. But by staying closed to all unpleasantness, we also stay closed to our own wellspring of compassion.
This is an old truth ~ Ryokan
RyokanIf there is beauty, there must be ugliness;
If there is right, there must be wrong.
Wisdom and ignorance are complementary,
And illusion and enlightenment cannot be separated.
This is an old truth, don’t think it was discovered recently.
“I want this, I want that”
Is nothing but foolishness.
I’ll tell you a secret –
All things are impermanent!
Reflected in a single pear ~ Ryokan
RyokanHow could we discuss
This and that
Without knowing
The whole world is
Reflected in a single pearl?
The solution lies in the human heart ~ Jack Kornfield
Jack KornfieldOn the deepest level, problems such as war and starvation are not solved by economics and politics alone. Their source is prejudice and fear in the human heart; and their solution also lies in the human heart.
Purpose of practice ~ Joseph Goldstein
Joseph GoldsteinUnless a practice cools the fires of greed, aversion, and ignorance it is worthless.
Dismantling the puzzle of dualism ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
Dzongsar Khyentse RinpocheWhat makes the Buddhist path so special is that it looks dualistic, but it has that ability to liberate you from the bondage of dualism. It is a deliberate and conscious knot that is consciously and deliberately designed to undo itself. All the skillful means and methods of the Buddhadharma are like a thorn that we use to take out another thorn in our hand. The purpose of renunciation mind, compassion, the recitation of mantras, and contemplation on the breath is to dig out dualism. These practices will dismantle the puzzle of dualism. They speak the language of the nondual and have the flavor of the nondual. For example, compassion is definitely dualistic, but with heavy investment, it leads you to nonduality.
Of these skillful methods that appear dualistic but point in the direction of nondualism, guru yoga is supreme. In the Vajrayana, guru devotion is even more practical than practicing compassion. It’s tangible. In the end, there is no such thing as dualistic and nondualistic. Remembering all of this, we develop gratitude to the guru and appreciation of the path of Tantrayana.
What Is Bodhichitta ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
All too often, though, even so-called Buddhists misunderstand bodhichitta and reduce it to little more than compassionate loving-kindness. Love, compassion and wanting to make people happy are very popular ideals these days and are often promoted as bodhichitta’s most important features. We forget that without bodhichitta there would be no mahayana or vajrayana Buddhism, and that the most crucial aspect of both these yanas is the wisdom of understanding shunyata (emptiness). Without wisdom, compassion alone is not “bodhichitta,” and vice versa; both qualities are essential.
Starting Loving-Kindness Practice ~ Jack Kornfield
Jack KornfieldIn our culture, people find it difficult to direct loving-kindness to themselves. We may feel that we are unworthy, or that it’s egotistical, or that we shouldn’t be happy when other people are suffering. So rather than start loving-kindness practice with ourselves, which is traditional, I find it more helpful to start with those we most naturally love and care about. One of the beautiful principles of compassion and loving-kindness practices is that we start where it works, where it’s easiest. We open our heart in the most natural way, then direct our loving-kindness little by little to the areas where it’s more difficult.