A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the chan...

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions ...

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

Yet I knew that spiritual practice is impossible without great dedication, energy, and commitment.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us—which in most cases is a very long time—but to look at it as just that, a vehicle, a raft to help us cross through the waters of doubt, confusion, desire, and fear.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

There are many ways up the mountain and each of us must choose a practice that feels true to our heart.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life