We may not have enough money or power to help great numbers of people, but we could embody this knowledge of caring.

We could manifest practice caring in word and gesture, impression and expression.

Mindful of this, it is time to ask ourselves, very seriously:

How much meaning and satisfaction do our actions bring?

What have we gotten back from our investment?

Have we healed our hearts?

Have we known the depth of love?

Have we benefited others?

Caring

Generating Happiness from Within

Everyone wants happiness, but few know how to generate it independently from within.

Our bodies, mind, and sense organs are the source of our vital energies, but all too often these energies are directed into pain, complaints, and dissatisfaction that work from within to close our hearts and isolate ourselves from others.

We have only to look around us to see where this negative current leads.

Can seeing this inspire us to develop a more positive orientation?

Can we ask mind and senses to give us more pleasure and less pressure?

Can we ask ourselves for contentment and inner peace, the foundation for satisfaction and joy that does not depend on others?

The Joy of Being

Compassion is open, free, and limitless.

Indescribable and utterly beyond intellectual comprehension, it responds to any situation spontaneously and without calculation, yet in a way that enlightens and transform.

Indeed, compassion may be compared to sunlight, since it awakens and brings joy to beings; compassion is also like a rainbow, its ineffable beauty lifting the hearts of all who see it.

Hidden Mind of Freedom p 59

Finding Patience

But impatience and anxiety can be our most valuable teachers of the practice of patience.

Listen carefully to anxiety, for it can be a valuable sign that you need to relax and loosen your expectations of yourself.

Learn to recognize how impatience arises.

Watch the construction of your mental and physical energy, the sense of urgency imparted to your thoughts and actions; note how impatience encourages the view that life is hopeless.

Instead of running after patience, relax and let it come to you.

Loosen the tension in your body; open your concentration and allow your emotional energy to flow.

Let the warm, soothing energy of patience arise within you and flow freely through your body.

Tibetan Meditation

One way to understand discipline is that it means, on a basic level, cherishing your priorities.

In the end, discipline that fosters well-being is not necessarily a matter of control, but of caring.

Caring

Can we recover a sense of knowing that is more than information?

Lotus Language

Taking care of ourselves is not just another selfish act with a spiritual label.

It is possible to give ourselves compassion without being motivated by self love, because grasping for satisfaction is very different from learning to care for ourselves.

Without compassion, thoughts and actions are based on desire for egotistical or selfish gratification.

But genuine compassion, the antidote to ego, arises from a humble and fearless attitude of openness and generosity.

Gesture of Balance

To work for others, to share and participate in life freely with them, you must see directly that you and they are the same.

Your bodies are the same space, if you probe deeply enough.

Your energies are all drawn from the same time.

Your experiences and aspirations are all ways of using the same knowledge, and remain unified within that knowledge.

We have never moved apart from one another, never become different or separate beings.

Until we see this directly, how can we feel real compassion for our human beings?…

An unconditional compassion must come from deep knowledge.

Then we can all explore the vastness and beauty of space and time together.

Dimensions of Thought

Each of us identifies a different “problem area”.  But somehow, no matter what it is, it’s always “my”, always “mine”…and always a problem. I have to live with that problem of mine, and carry the weight of the load.

I must: it’s my problem to solve.

Insofar as I have problems, I’m obliged to manage them, care for them, worry about them, and wonder: wonder what is happening, wonder what I can do, wonder what life would be like if this problem had never occurred.

Wondering is as close as most of us get to inquiry. We define, we extrapolate, we hesitate, and we decide. Our decisions have consequences , the consequences form chains, causes causing effects which have fresh causes: causal consequences sponsoring continuity. Case after case gets stacked up in our storehouse of knowledge: all too much, and yet never enough.

This is our experience. This is how it is. This is the status quo, our standard operating procedure: going, knowing, ruling – and being ruled, forever.

But beyond going, knowing and ruling, an unconquerable awareness shines.

Knowledge of OK Mantra

Questioning and being aware are the most precious teachers.

They dwell in the heart of every human being who begins to awaken to the waste and danger of an unexamined life.

Knowledge of Freedom