It is easy to imagine that the Buddha, the awakened one, is something or somewhere other than here or that awakening to reality will happen sometime other than now. But as long as we continue to think in terms of time we will deceive ourselves. The you who is chasing enlightenment will never become enlightened.
Instead of striving towards some distant goal that you will never reach, I invite you to stop and ask: How am I avoiding the enlightenment that is already present in each moment? How am I seeing separation where it doesn't exist?
Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?
Meditation is not a technique to master;
it is the highest form of prayer,
a naked act of love and effortless surrender
into the silent abyss beyond all knowing
Question your thoughts.
Question your stories.
Question your assumptions.
Question your opinions.
Question your conclusions.
Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness and joy.
The keys to freedom are in your hands.
Use them.
The biggest embrace of love you'll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you'll realize you've just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.
Wisdom without love is like having lungs but no air to breathe. Do not seek wisdom in order to acquire knowledge but in order to live and love more fully.
Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available, when we become openhearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know.
Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It's not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.
One doesn't stay in a state of nirvana by hiding from difficulties. You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it.
Only something as insane as human beings would ever asked themselves if 'I'm good.' You don't find oak trees having existential crisis. 'I feel so rotten about myself. I don't produce as much acorns as the one next to me.'