Every country has faults. In one it's too cold; in another too hot, or there's famine, or sickness, or crime, or the government is corrupt. The practitioner should not be attached to any of these countries and their various evils. - Tso Chan
A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on, we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We can't let just one channel dominate us. - Thich Nhat Hanh
The word 'attention' comes from the Latin attendere, which literally means 'to stretch. As we pay attention to, and therefore stretch, the interval in the mind between seeing and interpreting the world becomes a very different place. - Ben Ponte
Deep listening is at the foundation of right speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practise right speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we’ll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person. - Thich Nhat Hanh
“I recently had the experience of walking through Toronto’s flagship shopping mall looking for a small clock to give as a gift. There were at least 10 stores selling high-end watches—the kind of stores with fearsome security guards at their doors. The double irony is that almost everyone has a mobile phone and a smart watch so nobody really needs a watch like those stores sell, and, conversely, most of us could never afford to make such a purchase. So really those stores are telling us that we are unworthy but that we should aspire to be able to buy such useless items simply as status symbols. The underlying message seems to be that we are not allowed to be happy.” - John Harvey Negru
Compassionate listening is critical to interpersonal and political communication, because without it, more talking can exacerbate the existing divides and misunderstandings. - Yang Yang Cheng
To understand reality we must first understand the unreal. - Paul Brunton
People just don’t think rationally; they simply cling to the established pattern. They have always done it that way and they just refuse to change. - Buddhadasa
By doing regular meditation and having a bit of perspective on what the human mind is like, you can use it to push back a little bit and you don’t get so carried away and caught up in things like grief, or annoyance, or anger. - Ratnaprabha
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Victor M. Parachin ...is aVedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. Archives
July 2024
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