You Are IT

Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself.

~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Becoming a buddha is easy
But ending illusions is hard
So many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.

~ Shih-wu (1272-1352)

But once I had left Eiheiji and been away for some time, coming back was different. I heard the various sounds of practice—the bells and the monks reciting the sutra—and I had a deep feeling.

There were tears flowing out of my eyes, nose, and mouth! It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere. Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything.

I think this is true for everything. When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all that they are doing.

But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is.

~ Shunryu Suziki

Underneath the noise, notice the unchanging stillness.

Be involved in the world, be passionate and free, yet stay rooted in the infinite silence within.

In the depths of the ocean, the waves on the surface break and crash, yet make no sound.

~ Jeff Foster

In meditation we seem to be sitting by ourselves, but we do not sit just for ourselves. By focusing our attention on the breath, the body, thoughts, feelings, and sensations, or any other facet of our experience in meditation, we become more mindful—not mindless—through the transformative power of moment-to-moment alertness and presence of mind.

Instead of absentmindedly stumbling through life like sleepwalkers, we can use contemplative practice to achieve extraordinary insight into ourselves and the world in which we live; to inhabit and appreciate more fully the here and now; to free our minds and open our hearts, and to relax into our natural state.

The cultivation of mindfulness helps us wake up to things as they are, rather than as we would like them to be. And as we wake up to truth, to reality, we become a force for universal awakening, working with what actually is, not delusive fictions.

~ Lama Surya Das

All great religions represent a process through their symbols and rituals. All religious stories are, in the final analysis, the story of our own enlightenment.

As long as we choose to load our experience of Presence with the baggage of an old religious story, whether it is the story of Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Moses or Jesus, we can spend lifetimes anchoring the present to the past…

But, at some point we gently relinquish the religion of history, choosing quite simply to bathe in the splendor of Now.

Then our religion is freed from the bondage of dogma, and it becomes a lovely poem.

We can cherish the rituals, chants and stories as reflections of a Light that we constantly behold, shadows of a Life we perpetually breathe.

For all religions symbolize the surrender of the ego to the mystery of unfathomable Presence.

~ Fred LaMotte

Buddha has never been anything but an instantaneous lightning bolt over Bartlesville, Oklahoma. A lightning bolt is the Buddha.

Buddha has never been anything but a mountain brook cascading into the Nooksak Valley. A mountain brook is the Buddha.

Buddha has never been anything but wind sighing through ancient oaks by the lepers’ cemetery at Madalene Hospital in Chichester. Wind in the cemetery is the personal song of the Buddha.

Buddha has never been anything but a pebble on the path to the Orphanage of the Sisters of Mercy in Brooklyn. A pebble on your path is the Buddha.

Buddha has never been anything but the infinitesimal pause between exhalation and inhalation, a gift offered to a gift. Your breath is the Buddha.

If you don’t understand this, watch the snow choose whether to fall on a pine bough or camellia. Then be choiceless.

~ Fred LaMotte

So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

~ Saul of Tarsus

The only thing you have to offer another human being, ever, is your own state of being. You can cop out only just so long, saying, “I’ve got all this nice stuff, I know all this and I can do all this.”

But everything you do, whether you’re cooking food or doing therapy or being a student or being a lover, you are only doing your own being, you’re only manifesting how evolved a consciousness you are.

~ Ram Dass

It has been said that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, or, in the words of Chung-Tzu, ‘The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.’

Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of something pleasant nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant. To do this is to move in time with life, to be in perfect accord with its changing music, and this is called Enlightenment.

In short, it is to be detached from both the past and future and to live in the eternal Now. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this very moment.

You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now—otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it.

So become what you are.

~ Alan Watts