The message I want to give you is this: You don’t have to suffer!
You can be at ease.
You can find joy in whatever is happening right now, in this instant, in the middle of your life.
Gesture of Great Love
Reminder
The Gift of Quotes Retreat January 24-29 at Ratna Ling. See Ratnaling.org/retreats
The key to natural protection from emotional stress and tension is mindfulness of the breath.
Mindfulness is not forceful control, but an attentive awareness of what is occurring.
When we remain quiet and observe the flow of the breath, the body and mind naturally release the energy stored in tension from its dense and solid forms.
Liberated, this energy increases vitality and clarity and strengthens our ability to defuse pressures.
Instead of being caught up in a cycle of escalating pressure, we can develop an abiding peace and clarity that grow from within.
Knowledge of Freedom
Meditation is confronting what comes up, not following information, instructions, or ideals.
Assumptions or descriptions about what meditation or enlightenment is are not real.
True knowledge comes through experience.
Once we clean up our thoughts, we can experience what is there and know who we are.
With that knowledge, we can direct ourselves and heal our deceptions.
Footsteps on the Diamond Path
We’re so often anxious to establish something, to be something.
Why is that?
What is the main purpose of that identifiable identity?
And if it’s ever achieved, who achieved it?
Gesar Fall 2022
The foundation for success is built within the mind, in your motivation for action.
If your intention is strong and clear, the path to goodness lies open before you.
You can put intention into practice every day.
Gesar Fall 2022
Make the connection
Sometimes even the most profound insights can seem like just another thought, with no power to bring about change.
But contemplation gives you a way to transform those thoughts to reality.
Just ask what you can do to protect goodness.
How can you improve right now?
How can you make changes in the next twenty-four hours?
The next week?
The connection to goodness can be found in your heart.
Make the connection, and your life can become an artistic creation filled with joy.
TNMC Annals
Not examining how we subject ourselves to the regime of mind is very costly.
Underneath the not examining is a skepticism that knowledge has no power to free us.
Instead, we have a tendency to look for quick recipes to escape our prisons.
There must be a little laziness in being so curious for recipes.
People want there to be a special place, a loophole, a fast-food heaven, but that is merely a projection of mind and not tested out.
Along the way of projected dreams, I have lost my freedom.
The more I am dependent on what others say or show, the less chance I have for true freedom or liberation from samsara.
I need knowledge from my own observations of the way I have subjected myself to the regime of mind, not knowledge obtained from somebody else.
Knowledge of OK Mantra
Awareness generally means to be “aware of some thing”— to look at objects, to recognize, identify, and try to understand them.
This is commonsense awareness.
But as a living experience, natural awareness is simple and direct, open and responsive, without concepts, words, images and interpretations.
Awareness takes place within the first moment, not before, and not after. It is immediate, spontaneous.
There is no other “thing” to obscure the moment—there is no subject or object, no time or space.
All that remains is within this openness, which neither words nor concept can describe.
There is complete freedom from our restless attempts to hold on to something, to be secure in some distraction or some trance-like fixation.
There is no fear and no guilt—no desire to escape or be any other way.
There becomes complete self-acceptance and generates a fresh new outlook all its own.
Tibetan Meditation
Meditation is the foundation of self-development and well-being.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, meditation transforms the quality of everyday life, stimulating creativity, exercising mental capacities, and integrating body and mind.
Hidden Mind of Freedom Introduction
As we allow a deep caring to permeate all of our actions, we realize the humble heart is the greatest heart of all.
Skillful Means