You Are IT

The big innovation of Buddhism is not in recognizing the suffering of a normal life, but in pointing out that mental afflictions are not intrinsic to the human psyche. Recent scientific research has shown that these afflictive tendencies of mind can be measurably lessened through Buddhist practice. But Buddhism is making a much stronger claim: that the mind at its deepest level has the nature of luminosity, of innate bliss, and is altogether free of mental affliction. That’s a big hypothesis. We can’t test it now, but we can head in that direction.

– B. Alan Wallace

Imagination draws its energy from a confrontation with desire. It feeds off desire, transmuting and magnifying reality through desire’s power.

Fantasy does the opposite; it avoids desire by fleeing into a crude sort of wish-fulfillment that seems much safer.

Fantasy might be teddy bears, lollipops, sexual delights, or superhero adventures; it also might be voices in one’s head urging acts of outrage and mayhem. Or it might be the confused world of separation and fear we routinely live in, a threatening yet seductive world that promises us the happiness we seek when our fantasies finally become real.

Imagination confronts desire directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right where we are. Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination and reality are not in opposition: Imagination goes toward reality, shapes and evokes it.

– Norman Fischer, “Saved from Freezing”

Labeling is attachment in action. It’s something very subtle, very refined. Whatever appears, it latches on. So you simply have to let the mind be empty without labeling anything, for the emptiness that lets go of preoccupations or is free from the influence of thought-formations is something you have to look further into. Don’t label it as this or that level, for to measure and compare things in this way blocks everything – and in particular, knowledge of how the mind changes.

So to start out, simply watch these things, simply be aware.

– Upasika Kee Nanayon

Today I sat before the cliffs

Sat until the mist drew off

A rambling clear stream shore

A towering green ridge crest

Cloud’s dawn shadows still

Moon’s night light adrift

Body free of dust

Mind without a care.

– Han shan

In Buddhism there is a great respect for the power of self-centeredness to co-opt even the most magnanimous or sublime experience for its own self-aggrandizement.

The idea of ego is not so much a thing as a habit of using whatever experience arises to solidify and prop up our feeling of a solid and separate identity.

It is literally a form of ingesting experience to fatten our own self-absorption.

– Judy Lief

Names of the unified mind are Buddha-nature,

True suchness, the hidden essence,

The pure spiritual body,

The pedestal of awareness,

The innocent, universal round mirror-like knowledge,

The open source, the ultimate truth,

And pure consciousness.

The enlightened ones of the past, present, and future,

And all of their discourses,

Are all in your fundamental nature, inherently complete.

You do not need to seek,

But you must save yourself;

No one can do it for you.

– Xuefeng (822–908)

Thinking isn’t inherently bad. Like everything else, it’s useful in moderation. A good servant, but a bad master.

All so called civilized peoples have increasingly become crazy and self-destructive, because through excessive thinking, they have lost touch with reality. That’s to say we confuse signs, words, numbers, symbols and ideas with the real world.

Most of us would rather have money than tangible wealth and a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless it is photographed. And, to read about it the next day in the newspaper is oddly more fun for us than the original event.

– Alan Watts, Still The Mind

In truth, the notion of self we attach to the aggregates is a mere mental fabrication, a label put on something that does not exist.

People who wear tinted glasses or suffer from a visual impairment would see a white conch as yellow, even though the conch has never been anything but white.

In the same way, our deluded minds attribute reality to something that is utterly nonexistent.

This is what we call ignorance: not recognizing the void nature of phenomena and assuming that phenomena possess the attribute of true existence although in fact they are devoid of it.

With ignorance comes attachment to all that is pleasant to the ego as well as hatred and repulsion for all that is unpleasant.

In that way the three poisons—ignorance, attachment, and hatred—come into being. Under the influence of these three poisons, the mind becomes like a servant running here and there.

This is how the suffering of samsara is built up. It all derives from a lack of discernment and a distorted perception of the nature of phenomena.

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Spring has its hundred flowers,

Autumn has its many moons.

Summer has cool winds,

Winter its snow.

If useless thoughts do not

Cloud your mind,

Each day is the best of your life.

– Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183–1260)