Weekend wisdom

"Suppose someone says something that angers you. Your old pathway wants to say something to punish him. But that makes us victims of our habit energy. Instead, you can breathe in and say, “Unhappiness is in me, suffering is in me, anger is in me, irritation is in me.”

That is already helpful, recognizing your feelings and helping you not to respond right away. So you accept that anger and irritation in you, and smile to it.

With mindfulness, you look at the other person and become aware of the suffering in him or in her. He may have spoken like that to try to get relief from his suffering. He may think that speaking out like that will help him suffer less, but in fact he will suffer more.

With just one or two seconds of looking and seeing the suffering in him, compassion is born. When compassion is born, you don’t suffer any more, and you may find something to say that will help him.
With the practice, we can always open new neural pathways like that. When they become a habit, we call it the habit of happiness."

~Thich Nhat Hanh ~

"If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." ~Albert Einstein
"When fear-based thinking dominates a society the innate wisdom and compassion of artists, poets, teachers, musicians, women, children, elders and animals is often treated as inferior and unimportant- if it does not support the goals of leaders- be they kings, queens, emperors, dictators, terrorist masterminds or corporate CEOs…

Jesus understood this, as did the Buddha, Lao Tsu, Gandhi, Helen Keller, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others down through the ages. Millions honor and treasure their words, but are we ready yet to become “warriors” of compassion, to put wisdom into action, to open our hearts and question the fearful and aggressive thinking that our “great civilizations” continue to perpetuate?

As Einstein said, in order for our species to survive, we may have to…"
~Christopher Chase

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish
and then return to the source.

Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature.
~Lao Tsu
Tao Te Ching

“The final Buddhist vision of the world as the dharmadhatu– loosely translatable as the “field of related functions”- is not so different from the world view of Western science, except that the vision is experiential rather than theoretical.

Poetically, it is symbolized as a vast network of jewels, like drops of dew upon a multi-dimensional spider web. Looking closely at any single jewel, one beholds in it the reflections of all the others. The relationship between the jewels is technically called “thing/thing no obstacle” (shih shih wu ai), which is to say that any one form is inseparable from all other forms."
~Alan Watts

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life."
~ Hermann Hesse ~

"All the visible Universe is the Buddha; so are all sounds; hold fast to one principle and all the others are Identical. On seeing one thing, you see ALL. On perceiving any individual's mind, you are perceiving ALL Mind. Obtain a glimpse of one way and ALL ways are embraced in your vision, for there is nowhere at all which is devoid of the Way.

When your glance falls upon a grain of dust, what you see is identical with all the vast world systems with their great rivers and mighty hills. To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the Universe. Only come to know the nature of your own Mind, in which there is no self and no other, and you will in fact be a Buddha."
~Huang Po~

"The most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner's mind. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice."
~Shunryu Suzuki~