"Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, there is feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, that one thinks about. What one thinks about, that one mentally proliferates."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"The deeper purpose of meditation is not simply to enjoy moments of calm, as rewarding and meaninful as they are, but to understand deeply how our minds lead us into unhappiness so that we can stop the activities that lead to those states."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"[...] form is not yours, feeling is not yours, perception is not yours, volitional formations are not yours, consciousness is not yours: abandon them. When you have abandoned them, that will lead to your welfare and happiness."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"It is the lack of satisfaction that leads most of us to a spiritual path. in Buddhism the entire goal of the spiritual life is to end this sense of unsatisfactoriness by finding an unshakable peace, called nirvana."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Consciousness is the most basic knowing of an object, before any words and before perception. Perception can act only after consciousness has revealed an appearance which can then be named."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Meditation is about coming to understand things the way they are, not the way we imagine them to be or would like them to be.

We will simply pay attention to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, thoughts and emotions as the way to stay most closely in touch with reality.

A key point in meditation then is to move our attention out of the conceptual acrobatics and fantastic proliferations of thougths and into what is real.

[...] as we observe sense objects again and again, we find that not a single one lasts.

Seeing change directly is an important perception, because concepts lead us into assumptions of continuity and permanence."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Dilgo Khyentse, one of the great Tibetan masters of the 20th century, was once asked, 'Why do we practice?' His response: 'To make the best of a bad situation.'"

Forget about being a Buddhist. Be a human. - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Trike Daily - Nov 04, 2016

"Buddhism is a path of spiritual practice that is about letting go of identity and experiencing life free from the limitations of the conceptual mind."

Forget about being a Buddhist. Be a human. - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Trike Daily - Nov 04, 2016

"What makes us miserable, what causes us to be in conflict with one another, is our insistence on our particular view of things: our view of what we deserve or want, our view of right and wrong, our view of self, our view of other, our view of life, our view of death. But views are just views. They are not ultimate truth. There is no way to eliminate views, nor would we want to. As long as we are alive and aware there will be views. Views are colorful and interesting and life-enhancing—as long as we know they are views. The Chinese Zen masters are asking us to know a view as a view, and not to mistake it for something else. If you know a view as a view, you can be free of that view. If you know a thought as a thought, you can be free of that thought.

Going beyond language through language is something we can practice and develop through meditation, study, and awareness in daily life. In meditation we can learn to pay attention not only to sensation but also to emotion and thinking. Learning to let thinking come and go, we can eventually understand a thought as a thought and a word as a word, and with this understanding we can find a measure of freedom from thoughts and words."

Beyond language: finding freedom through thoughts and words - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2011