"We are training to let everything come and go, without fear or clinging. This is the main reason we meditate."
Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 171
"We usually grasp at whatever occurs. For instance, when sadness arises, we hold
on to this feeling and think, “I am so sad, I am so depressed.” But
from the Mahamudra point of view, what has happened? A feeling has
arisen in the mind, like a cloud. Like a cloud, it appears and then it
disappears, and that’s all there is to it. This time it is sadness
arising, the next time it may be happiness, the next time it may be
anger, and later it may be kindness. All sorts of things arise, like
wildflowers in a spring meadow. All sorts of flowers grow; all sorts of
thoughts and emotions arise. They are all okay; they’re nothing special.
When we understand what our thoughts and feelings are, and we
experience them in this way, we are able to let them come and let them
go."
Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 122
"Rather than frantically looking for loopholes in the teachings, isn't it wiser to accept that mindfulness won't make the plum any sweeter or the kettle any brighter? But here's the hopeful part - the more we practice mindfulness, the less we'll care about sweetness or brightness."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"Mindfulness practice does lead to happiness, but not because the stuff of the mundane now - its sights, sounds, and the consciousness that knows them - turns out to be better than we'd thought. Despite the myth, bare attention doesn't expose some hidden core of radiance in the empty vibrations; no such core exists."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"The more clearly we see the lack of worth in mental and physical sensations, the less desire we'll have for them until, thoroughly disenchanted, craving will be snuffed out automatically. As soon as that occurs, pure happiness will arise by itself."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"The Buddha discovered that the happiest mind is the nonattached one. This happiness is of a radically different order than what we're used to. When asked how there could be bliss in nibbana, since it offers no lovely sights or sounds, Sariputta, the Buddha's chief disciple, said: "That there is no sensation is itself happiness." Compared with this joy, he implied, pleasure falls woefully short. We read in the sutras that "everything the world holds good, sages see otherwise. What other men call 'sukha' (pleasure) that the saints call 'dukkha' (suffering) . . ." (SN 3.12). This isn't just an alternative viewpoint - it's ultimate reality."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"The Buddha clearly stated the reason for practicing mindfulness: to uncover and eliminate the cause of suffering. That cause is desire. When its cause is absent, suffering cannot arise. At that point, the sutras tell us, one knows a happiness with no hint of anxiety to mar it. But that isn't because sights and sounds magically become permanent, lovely, and the property of Self. Rather, these impressions temporarily cease and consciousness touches a supramundane object called "nibbana," the unconditioned element. Although a mental object, nibbana, the "highest bliss," is not a formation at all; it is unformed and permanent. So the present moment is worthwhile because only in it can we experience nibbana - complete freedom from suffering.
Yet can't sense-impressions be pleasurable? Yes, but pleasure isn't the unending source of happiness we take it to be. In daily life we perceive beautiful sensations as solid and relatively lasting, when in fact they're only unstable vibrations that fall away the instant they form. Like cotton candy that dissolves before you can sink your teeth into it, pleasure doesn't endure long enough to sustain happiness. "
Yet can't sense-impressions be pleasurable? Yes, but pleasure isn't the unending source of happiness we take it to be. In daily life we perceive beautiful sensations as solid and relatively lasting, when in fact they're only unstable vibrations that fall away the instant they form. Like cotton candy that dissolves before you can sink your teeth into it, pleasure doesn't endure long enough to sustain happiness. "
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"Take the sunset: What happens when we see it? Ultimately, we don't. When the eye contacts a visual form, we merely see color, not a three-dimensional thing. In fact, the tint, along with the consciousness seeing it, dies out in a split-second, but we fail to catch the dissolve. Why? Because delusion blurs the separate moments of perception together, making experience look seamless. After the color sparks out, subsequent moments of consciousness replay the image from memory, dubbing it "sunset." This process takes only a fraction of a second. Nevertheless, by the time we name it, the original image is already gone. "Sunset" is a concept perceived through the mind-door, not the eye. We mistake this product of mental construction for something irreducibly real. Without the tool of mindfulness the trick is too fast to see, like trying to catch the separate frames of a running film."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"These six main objects (sounds, colors, smells, tastes, touches, and mental objects) are all that we can know. No matter how wildly adventurous our lives are, we still can't experience anything other than these half-dozen forms. Since mind and object are the only building blocks from which a moment of life can be fashioned, there is nothing else that could possibly take place in the now. "
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"Mindfully noting mental and physical phenomena, we learn that they arise only to pass away. In the deepest sense, we cannot manipulate or actually own them. These traits are unwelcome-unsatisfactory. So the more mindfulness one has, the clearer dukkha becomes."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
"Consciousness is always aware of something. When a patch of azure bursts into our field of awareness, a blip of eye-consciousness sees the color. When a smell wafts toward us, another blip of consciousness knows the scent. Only mind and object; that's all there is to it. Our entire lives are nothing but a chain of moments in which we perceive one sight, taste, smell, touch, sound, feeling, or thought after another. Outside of this process, nothing else happens."
What's so great about now? - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006
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