Remember: even ‘openness’ is open and unfinished, subject to change. 

Gesture of Great Love

When you start from a sense of ‘me’ and ‘mind’, what you discover in meditation is more of the same.

The insights that meditation can bring are instantly converted into concepts, variations on positions you already hold.

But genuinely new knowledge does not come from confirming existing likes and dislikes. 

Gesture of Great Love 

What small step can I take today to bring an important goal closer to reality?

Mastering Successful Work

It has more to do with pursuing our highest ideals and values. for instance, it might have to do with helping others — our family, our friends, our community — or making a contribution to humanity.

It might have to do with advancing knowledge or creating beauty.

Your values may be very different from someone else’s, and that is fine.

But the question to ask is whether you are letting time go by in activities that have nothing to do with your own sense of what’s important.

That’s what I mean by getting a good return on investment.

Dimensions of Mind

Can you really accept the many faces of suffering that you experience?

If you could give yourself a gesture of love, if you could move beyond illusion, why wouldn’t you do that?

If you are choosing otherwise, is it because you are afraid, or do you think freedom from suffering is not possible? 

Gesture of Great Love

The real mystery is not somewhere else.

It’s right here in what we call reality, or truth, or daily life.

It’s in confusion and loneliness and boredom, and in the thoughts and concepts, and in all the insects, lizards and fruit trees.

That’s how it manifests, but before it manifests, before conditions, there is a unity, a play of light. 

Gesture of Great Love

Relax and appreciate whatever is happening, as it is happening. 

Relaxing body, language, and mind, the deeper energies and inner powers of the psyche show up.

You get a feel for a different way of being, one that has nothing to do with the regime of mind.

It may take time to free yourself fully from mind’s patterns, but relaxing is the best way to start. 

Gesture of Great Love 

How present are you to your own experience?

It’s a reasonable question to ask.

If the way you see the world is based on labels mind assigns, does that mean that labels come between you and experience, and you are not really present at all? 

Gesture of Great Love

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 

Relax in the morning, when ideas and perceptions begin to crowd in.

Relax during the day when the temptation is strong to get caught up in whatever presents itself.

Relax in the evening when the day is winding down and you feel the urge to look for distraction.

Gesture of Great Love