Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
Buddhism teaches that just as our actions have karmic results, the state of our consciousness has karmic results as well. That’s why it is very important to look inside and make sure that we are choosing the state of consciousness we want to live in. We can choose to reside in an unenlightened state of … Continued
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
We have the power to reshape the future—our own future as well as the future of humanity. It teaches us that all of the circumstances and conditions we experience in life are a manifestation of the state of mind that we choose to reside in. This is true because the state of our mind determines … Continued
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
We need to have compassion for ourselves and for all of humanity because we are all carrying this very heavy burden of karma. This heavy burden of pain and suffering. No one escapes this. So, we have to have acceptance and forgiveness for ourselves and all of humanity. Basically, we need to give everybody a … Continued
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
There is a beautiful story, often attributed to Native Americans, about a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather said, “There is a war going on inside of me. It is a very ugly fight.” His grandson asked, “What kind of war is it?” The grandfather replied, “It is a fight between two wolves. One is … Continued
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
The writer James Baldwin once said, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because once the hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain.”
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
Consciousness can be very extraordinary; we can experience love and compassion. But sometimes we can be a little bit lost, especially when our consciousness becomes aware of itself and develops the sense of a separate self. This is the experience that there is “me” and then there is the world “out there.” Then we develop … Continued
Choosing Compassion – How to Be of Benefit in a World That Needs Our Love
Experiences of liking are so strong that Buddha called them cravings. He put these cravings into three categories: craving for pleasure, craving for existence, and craving for nonexistence. These cravings are tendencies that are so deeply rooted in our system that we might not be able to change them right away. The concept of three … Continued
If you find yourself venturing into the past or future through thinking, it is almost always because an uncomfortable feeling lies beneath the thinking, and thought provides a means of escape. Escaping boredom, expectation, longing or seeking through thought does nothing to diminish the feeling itself. It merely avoids it. When you return from your … Continued
The peace you long for is not found by escaping uncomfortable feelings through thought. It lies in the opposite direction. It lives in your being, just beneath your feelings.
If you find yourself lost in thought, trace the thought back to the uncomfortable feeling that underlies it, the feeling from which you are trying to escape. Then sink deeply into that feeling. Sink into the boredom itself and, at some point, you will pass through it and discover the peace at its depths.
If your thoughts are like ripples and waves on the surface of the ocean, your feelings are like currents and eddies in its middle layers, and the peace of your being is like the silent depths. So if you find yourself resting on the surface, surfing the waves of thought, sink down into the feelings … Continued
Be sensitive to the slightest feeling of longing, even if it has no particular object. It may simply be an existential sense that something or someone is missing. What you long for lives just beneath that feeling. Longing itself is never fulfilled; it only subsides.
Each time a desire is fulfilled through the acquisition of an object, substance, activity or relationship, the impulse of seeking does indeed come to an end. As this impulse subsides, you taste the peace that is the nature of being. But the mind soon rises again and attributes this peace to the object or experience … Continued
‘What can we know for certain that is absolutely true? Can anything that is known by the mind be relied upon?’
the scientist’s search for knowledge is exactly the same search as an artist’s quest for beauty. In fact, the scientist’s search is not for knowledge itself but for understanding. Knowledge is thought, but understanding takes place when thought comes to an end, just as beauty is revealed at the end of a perception.
All spiritual and religious paths, in one way or another, are aimed at divesting the mind of or expanding it beyond its limitations. However, when the mind is relieved of its limitations it ceases to be mind, as such, and stands revealed as the eternal, infinite consciousness that is its essential, irreducible reality. That knowing … Continued
To know objective experience awareness assumes the form of mind, but to know itself awareness need not assume the form of mind; it need only remain in itself. This self-resting in and as awareness is the essence of meditation or prayer. It is the non-activity in which awareness knows its own being. A mind that … Continued
Thus, as a compassionate concession to such a mind we may say, to begin with, that the presence of awareness is known as the experience of simply being aware, the feeling of being or the knowledge ‘I am’. Turning the mind towards any of these will take the mind on a unique journey, in a … Continued
In the Direct Path it is recognised that the experience of being aware or awareness itself is the knowing element in all experience, irrespective of the content of experience, and thus no particular experience is a carrier, indication or hallmark of awareness itself. Just as the screen is equally evident in all movies, irrespective of … Continued
How is consciousness going to discover its own nature? In order to know objective experience, consciousness must assume the form of mind, but it cannot know itself in the form of mind. The world is known by the mind; the mind is known by consciousness; and consciousness is known by itself.