You Are IT

What your ego considers “mine,” becomes your false identity in the dream. Your ego obscures and hides your true identity, and pretends to be you.

– Sampo Kaasila

First, there has to be some sense of being wary of confused states, an acute understanding that this clinging to “me” causes nothing but trouble, endless trouble.

Second, you must cultivate love and compassion for all sentient beings, develop compassion to the point where you cannot bear not to help others.

And third, there has to be some sincere interest in finding the real solution, the antidote to the root cause of confused spinning around in samsara, which is the attitude of blindly clinging to ego.

– Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche

The human mind has the tendency to manufacture concepts and beliefs in relationship to things that are inherently transcendental. This often leads us to suffer the old curse of “mistaking the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself.”

The cause of this mistaken perception is the ego, since the ego’s only occupation is to sustain its flimsy existence or world of illusion. It always tries its best to create hindrances to the realization of truth.

-Tulku Thubten Rinpoche

Tao follows the way of the watercourse

As the heart/mind through meditation

Returns to the sea

Life is a garden,
not a road.
We enter and exit
through the same gate
wandering.
Where we go matters less
than what we notice.

— Bokonon

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.

– Hans Margolius

Whenever there is attachment in my mind
And whenever there is the desire to be angry,
I should not do anything nor say anything,
But remain like a piece of wood.

Whenever I have distracted thoughts, the wish to verbally belittle others, Feelings of self-importance and self-satisfaction;
When I have the intention to describe the faults of others,
Pretension and the thoughts to deceive others;

Whenever I am eager for praise
Or have the desire to blame others;
Whenever I have the wish to speak harshly and cause dispute; At (all) such times I should remain like a piece of wood.

– Shantideva

No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

— Alan Watts

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

~ Luke 9:58

The holy man is beyond time, he does not depend on any view nor subscribe to any sect; all current theories he understands, but he remains unattached to any of them.

– Buddha