"Suffering is a psychological response to feeling, rather than a feeling itself. Suffering consists of the disappointment felt with the passing away of pleasurable experience, or the annoyance and discontent felt in the face of unwanted or unpleasant experience. In short, the suffering is caused by our wanting things to be different than they are."

Unlimiting mind - p. 8

"Seeing what arises and passes away in the mind and body each moment allows what we experience to become something known and understood, rather than something shaped entirely by invisible unconscious conditioning. Such mindfulness provides the necessary prerequisite for the next transformative step pointed to by the Buddha: insight into the nature of phenomena."

Unlimiting mind - p. 78

"Equanimity here does not mean disconnection or neutral feeling, but a much more profound state that allows one to remain imperturbable in the face of even the strongest feelings. When one realizes that the arising feeling is one thing, while the attitude generated in response to it is something else entirely, the chain of compulsive causation is broken and a moment of freedom is born."

Unlimiting mind - p.79

"We are used to thinking of freedom as being free to do what we want, but the Buddha sees real freedom as being free from wanting."

Unlimiting mind - p. 93

"Vipassana meditation has to do with looking deeply into the mind and body to discern the various processes unfolding each moment that fabricate the virtual world of our experience.

As the mind moves through the stages of assembling experience, from awareness to perception to conception to proliferation, it moves farther and farther into the realm of macro-construction. At each step we see less of things as they are and more of things as we construe them to be. Meditation practice works to reverse this process."

Unlimiting mind - p. 114-115 

"The core insight of the buddhist tradition - the relentless emptiness of phenomena - has profound implications for all of us who are trying to understand the nature of life. It points to the disturbing fact that all nouns are arbitrary constructions. A person, place, or thing is just an idea invented to freeze the fluid flow of the world into objects that can be labeled and manipulated by adroit but shallow modes of mind. Beyond and behind these snapshots we take for ourselves is a vast and unnamable process."

Unlimiting mind - p. 131

"Desire is a state of disequilibrium between what is arising and what one wants to be arising."

Unlimiting mind - p.132

"The self is a flawed strategy, born in ignorance, nurtured by craving and perpetuated by endless moments of grasping in which we pull toward us what we like to consider part of ourselves and push away what we don`t like."

Unlimiting mind - p. 135

"Meditation can be understood as an intentional action of paying attention, of being present with, or of otherwise choosing to be aware of what is arising and passing away in the field of experience."

Unlimiting mind - p.166

"Wisdom, understood as seeing things as they really are, is the crucial transformative principle in the Buddhist tradition.

As with the arising of mindfulness, so also for the arising of wisdom: it cannot be forced by the will or engineered by the technology of meditation. Yet the conditions which support the emergence of wisdom can be patiently and consistently cultivated, moment after mindful moment, until it unfolds as of its own accord, like the lotus bursting out above the water, or the moon flashing suddenly from behind a cloud."

Unlimiting mind - p. 174-175

"When true mindfulness arises, one feels as if one is stepping back and observing what is happening in experience, rather than being embedded in it. This does not mean separation or detachement, but is rather a sense of not being hooked by a desirable object or not pushing away a repugnant object. There in the middle, equidistant from each extreme, one encounters a sense of freedom that allows for greater intimacy with experience."

Unlimiting mind - p. 172 

"One can discern, with the faculty Buddhists call wisdom, that all experience is shaped within a matrix of cause and effect. The “disagreeableness” that has arisen is merely a mental attitude of aversion, coagulating around a particular feeling of displeasure, which co-arises with the cognizing of a particular sensory object. The attitude is a product of one’s dispositions, which are themselves nothing more than patterns of learned responses that have built up during a lifetime (or more) of acting and reacting in the world.

Such a breakthrough in understanding allows for a dramatic and immediate liberation of the mind from the coercion of desire—both the desire to hold on to what is deemed agreeable and the desire to push away what is disagreeable. When one realizes that the arising feeling is one thing, while the attitude generated in response to it is something else entirely, the chain of compulsive causation is broken and a moment of freedom is born.

One can now choose to respond differently, and the agreeable/disagreeable attitude that forms the warp and woof of our suffering can be replaced by something capable of embracing both pleasure and pain without reaction. Serene, yet radically intimate with experience, we can, like the Buddha, abide in any moment with the hint of a smile on our lips."

In the blink of an eye - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2006

"Mindfulness practice offers the restraint necessary to overcome the tug of desire upon the senses. As we notice the mind wandering off to explore a gratifying train of thought, or as we notice the body’s urging to nudge ourselves into a more comfortable position, we gently abandon the impulse and return attention to the primary object of awareness. We do this again and again, until the mind becomes content with being fully present with what is manifesting here and now in the field of experience, rather than rushing off for some other form of stimulation. As the mind settles down it becomes considerably more powerful, and thus more empowered.


With the senses no longer struggling to reach pleasing forms and no longer regarding unpleasing forms as repulsive, the mind is able to see more clearly what is actually arising and falling away."

The ties that unbind - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2007