Begin to live in other levels of attention all the time whether you're at work, driving or running on the beach. When you begin to be in a more meditative state all the time you will find that it fits rather well with everything that you do.
When we meditate and we are able to stop thought, we get a sense of being beyond the body. Our consciousness expands and we see ourselves as beings of light.
I've never met anyone who's serious about enlightenment.
I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.
Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.
You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.
As the kundalini energy increases, as the energy of the psyche becomes more pronounced, which it does as thought becomes eclipsed by silence, all the variant mind states burn away.
Your mind is your life. It's your essence and your substance. It's the part of you that has always been and will always be. Its formations change constantly, which is what makes you always new.
The aura of billions of people coats all experiences like a thick cloud of smog. Just to live on the earth is to live in that smog.
Stop trying to do things that will make you happy. Happiness is a state of mind; because otherwise, you are a slave to circumstance.
You don't have to take drugs to be happy. You don't have to drink to be happy. You don't have to have people around you who love you to be happy. You don't need anything except the clarity of your own mind.
A society that destroys the environment that supports it, I would not consider to be intelligent life. It's like the cancer that ultimately kills itself by destroying the host it feeds on.
According to Buddhism, each person is a Buddha who has forgotten their original nature. If we in the pampered West, having grown up with so many advantages, could not claim our own health and our agency, preferring to see ourselves as helpless victims, then who would do it? Who would take responsibility for the world?
Practice being happy. Work at it. It's a new role, I realize, but you'll get it. The auditions will be coming up very soon. So get on top of it. I'm sure you will get the part.
Women are terrified of their sexuality because they've got so much of it, and we live in a society that says they don't.
If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment.
There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt.
Most of the spiritual traditions were very theistic and the idea of an external god pulling the strings didn't resonate with me. I then discovered Buddhism and found the perfect path. I felt so grateful to the Buddha for having given the path, and not just explaining the end result, but showing so clearly how to get there.
Buddhism is a heresy on Hinduism. It was Hinduism that did the dirty work for Buddhism, by the time Buddha came along priest-craft was an ancient tradition in India.
I feel that there's a certain danger in always being in a lovely rural setting. You can lose touch.