Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they ...
Mindfulness promises a great number of desirable benefits, and is based on much more solid research than many competing ideas on how to change people.
Is it not possible — I often wonder — that things we have felt with great intensity have an experience independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible,in time, that some device will be invented by whic...
Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, - the innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief ...
Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more ...
There is today a division of labor between the elite and the masses. In medieval Europe aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries whereas peasants lived frugally minding every penny. Today the tables have turned. The rich take ...
The power of such a mountain is so great and yet so subtle that, without compulsion, people are drawn to it from near and far, as if by the force of some invisible magnet…this worshipful or religious attitude is not impressed by scientific facts, l...
Think of the old cliché about the mind being 'an excellent servant but a terrible master'. This, like many clichés, so lame & banal on the surface, actually expresses a great & terrible truth.
I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is a...
Each one of us holds the promise of greatness within our heart, minds, and souls. Our potential and where it leads us are as unique as our fingerprints, yet the way to access what is possible is universal. Affirm your life; find joy every day, even i...
In the nineteenth century, Fritjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds by dint of its exhilarating physicality. By extension, I believe that snow helps strip away the things that don't matter. It leaves us thinking of li...
There was no other way to say it. After being heartbroken for so long, I had made myself completely numb inside. Maybe not from physical pain, but anything emotional, yes. Sexual pleasure? Numb to that, too. I’d have been a great actress. After all...
Helen Jordan: It's just I'm... I'm so tired of being admired all the time. All these men I mean... they're all beautiful, artistic minds, great sex, the whole package, but hollow, you know what I mean? I feel nobody's really honest with me. Nobody wa...
there're times when i suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. it shows us pictures. pictures of the past and the might-one-day-be. this mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice
To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.
True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.
When we say something, our subjective intention or situation is always involved. So there is no perfect word; some distortion is always present in a statement.
But as long as you have some fixed idea or are caught by some habitual way of doing things, you cannot appreciate things in their true sense.
There is no particular way in true practice. You should find your own way, and you should know what kind of practice you have right now.
Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not.
In the ancient Indian Pali language, the words for mind and heart are the same. And the Chinese character for mindfulness is a combination of two characters. One part means now and the other means mind or heart. So, when you hear the word mindfulness...
