A Collection of Buddhist Sayings in English
• A day of wind and moon in an eternity of endless space.
• A fool can show wisdom in admitting his foolishness.
• A fool who thinks himself wise truly deserves to be called a fool.
• A guardian of truth is wise and just.
• A heart which is empty of evil is full of wisdom.
• A hundred streams flow to the sea.
• A man centered in loving kindness dies free of fear and confusion.
• A man centered in loving-kindness sleeps in comfort.
• A man centered in loving-kindness, dreams no evil dreams.
• A maternal body of the four elements is trouble.
• A meeting of equal opposites comes to a balance in the middle.
• A mental impression arises, draws and pulls at the mind, and falls away.
• A mental picture is just a fleeting image without actual form or fixture.
• A mind that is capable of a small sin is capable of a big one.
• A mind that keeps itself free of taints may be said to bathe inwardly.
• A mind-moment arises and ceases just like everything else.
• A monk should serve as a shining example on the path to perfection.
• A monk should not relax his energy and determination to achieve spiritual progress, even when he is ill.
• A monk who follows the monastic code of discipline will never use money or engage in buying or selling.
• A noble woman seeks the Dhamma beyond the beautiful.
• A palm tree ripped out at the roots does not grow again.
• A perpetrator can deceive everyone but himself.
• A person who cleaves to worldly possessions and passions is like a child eating honey smeared on the edge of a knife.
• A person who part of the world, like everything else, falls apart and dies.
• A shaven-head does not make one a wise ascetic.
• A snowflake never falls in the wrong place.
• A Sutta should be read again and again, lest its message be lost.
• A taste of Dhamma conquers all taste for tastes.
• A thousand mountain ranges face the highest peak.
• A tranquil mind is a mind that is focused and clear.
• A tree, even when it has been cut to a stump, will sprout and grow again.
• A true Buddhist works for the well-being and happiness of all.
• A white heron on a snowfield hides itself, unseen in its own image.
• A wise one becomes full of goodness, just as drops of water fill a pot.
• A wise one, holding a scale, perceives when just even one speck of worldly dust produces an imbalance.
• A woman’s fragrance is the most alluring of them all.
• A wrong action, like milk, soon turns sour.
• A wrongly-directed mind brings greater harm than any enemy.
• Abandoning self-indulgence opens the door to wisdom, clarity and compassion.
• Admiration, clothed in praise, is a spiritual disaster disguised as a blessing.
• Advanced practitioners do not have to be sitting; one can practice while engaged in any activity.
• After listening to our teachers, whether we walk the path is up to us alone.
• After making merit for a long time, one experiences desirable, pleasant, charming results for a long time.
• After Siddhartha became a Buddha, he left Siddhartha behind.
• After spring rain, dried-roots sprout again.
• All created things perish; whoever realizes this transcends pain.
• All existence is characterized by a sense of suffering in which there is no lasting satisfaction.
• All fabrications and fixations of the mind remain stressful.
• All forms are unreal; whoever realizes this transcends pain.
• All happiness arises from the desire for others to be happy.
• All know the way, but few follow it.
• All misery comes from the desire to be happy.
• All of the senses are manifest, but they are void of stability.
• All pain comes from resisting the actual truth.
• All sayings about the Dhamma say the same thing in different ways.
• All that is subject to arising is impermanent and not self.
• All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.
• All things are objects for insight meditation. Just keep noting them with concentrated awareness, keeping the field of perception clear of any associations or dependencies.
• All things are simultaneously interdependent and impermanent.
• All things are uncertain. Uncertainty is the nature of all things.
• All things knowable to the senses are things of this world; that which is not knowable to the senses is the Dhamma. That’s the paradox.
• All things of this world die; they have death built-in.
• Almost hidden in the darkness, the crane dreams in wintry nights
• Amassing wealth is like trying to fill a bottomless-vessel.
• An angry mind does not discern or fear danger.
• An awakened mind is able to predict how it will act or react in the future, based upon what it is doing now.
• An awakened one does not relish offerings but seeks seclusion instead.
• An irritable person affects all those around him with stress and distress.
• An un-cut hand can handle poison, but why take the risk?
• An unshakable, unconcerned mind can never be entangled and troubled.
• An untrained-mind will fight you for what it wants to call its own, just like a dog, if you try to take away its bone.
• Analyze what is not genuine and just dressed and disguised.
• Analyzed carefully under the scope of close and constant observation, clinging attachment gradually dissolves into peace.
• And again monks, a Bhikkhu reflects closely upon this very body, from the soles of the feet up and from the tips of the hair down, enclosed by the skin and various kinds of impurities.
• Anger always arises together with mental pain.
• Anger and accelerated breath are intimations of a painful death.
• Anger fosters misery. Fury clouds the mind. Rage results in disaster
• Anger produces only unwholesome actions.
• Animals have no chance to increase Dhamma. If we do not practice with right understanding, we fall back to the level of animals.
• Anticipate the poisonous snake in the path, and avoid its bite.
• Any dirty little deed you might want to conduct when no one is looking is still seen and observed by yourself. Watch and act accordingly.
• Any form of attachment is a poisonous and harmful thing.
• Any one of the senses will trap and ensnare, so observe and beware.
• Any phenomenon whatever, sensed or conceived in the mind is a subject worthy of penetrative analysis and investigation.
• Any satisfying and comforting illusion needs to be constantly renewed.
• Anything that appears will disappear of itself; trying to stop the process will cause consternation and pain.
• Anything you attain is karmic. This is what turns the Wheel.
• Anything you want to be is just a delusive, worldly desire.
• Apply mindfulness with arduous effort striving for deliverance.
• Arising of wisdom is freedom from attachment to the five khandas: material form; feelings; perceptions; mental formulations; and consciousness.
• As a beautiful flower with a delightful fragrance is pleasing, so is wise, loving speech, matched with right action.
• As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect it, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness, all over the world.
• As for the body, it can be peaceful only when the mind is full attentive; the minute mindfulness lapses, the mind will go back to playing its same old tricks.
• As long as even the subtlest thread of craving remains in the mind, we are not beyond the danger of being wholly swept away by the terrible flood of existence.
• As long as the mind does not know itself, as long as the mind is not bright and illuminated, the mind is not free.
• As long as the mind is attached to any image, it cannot be empty.
• As long as there is a group of monks practicing the Dhamma as it was practiced by the Buddha and his followers, Buddhism will never die.
• As long as there is no cutting of the causal stream, there is no way out of illusory appearance.
• As long as we follow the world, there is no stopping for rest.
• As seasoned-fighters face the swords of the enemy on the battle line, lightly dodge the weapons of defilement and overcome the foe with nimble skill.
• As solid rock is not shaken by the wind, so the wise are not shaken by blame or praise.
• As soon as we have performed any action, our control over it is lost.
• As the craftsman selects his tool, he isn’t concerned with the weight of it but only with accomplishing his task.
• As the fields are damaged by weeds, so men are destroyed by passions.
• As the mind becomes more purified and rarified, we no longer think in the same ways that we used to do.
• As the mind becomes more refined, pleasure will disappear, as equanimity leaves it behind.
• As the mind calms down, the breath will also calm down without exerting conscious control.
• As the mind continues in practice, onto a more-refined level, concentrate on separating the refined from the coarse.
• As the mind develops through Samadhi, it feels peace and equanimity wherever it may be.
• As the mind is directed through concentration, the coarsest parts will fall away, because they cannot follow the mind into refinement. Then, both the body and the mind will feel lighter.
• As the path steadily quells defilements, so the cessation of suffering comes about, for cessation is dependent on the strength of the path.
• As water drops from a lotus leaf, so sorrow drops from those who are freed from unwholesome craving.
• As water fills a jar, drop-by-drop, so one insight leads to wisdom.
• As we continue to turn attention inwards and reflect on the Dhamma, the wisdom faculty gradually matures, and the mind experiences the body’s physical characteristics as formless and immaterial objects.
• Asking unanswerable questions pulls our attention away from focusing on direct experience and how dependent events influence one another in the immediate present.
• Associate with virtuous men; listen to the true Dhamma wisely; consider the true Dhamma wisely; practice in accordance with the Dhamma.
• At dawn, it was the Buddha’s habit of surveying the world with his divine eye to see those in need of help.
• At last I see a Brahmin who is fully-quenched, who, by not halting and not straining, has passed over attachment to this world
• Attach to all of your desires and see where it gets you. See what the result is, and this will give you cause for reflection.
• Attaching to what it likes, the mind goes spins around and around until it becomes dizzy.
• Attained merit is indestructible.
• Attempting the eradication of the six senses is like trying to plug one leak in a sinking boat, only to find that it is leaking elsewhere in five other places at the same time.
• Attraction and repulsion are the opposite ends of unrestrained compulsion.
• Avoid blame, the way a tamed-horse avoids the whip.
• Avoid irritation in word, deed and thought by exercising mindfulness over the body, speech and mind.
• Avoid slitting your throat with your own tongue.
• Avoid the plight of the ant that fell into the honey-pot.
• Awaken the mind without its being fixed anywhere.
• Bail-out the boat that is filling with passions to travel lightly on the open sea.
• Balance basic need against excessive greed.
• Basic seeing, hearing, and knowing are at first only empty images. • Be a good example to everybody, but especially to yourself. • Be a lamp upon yourself. • Be able, upright, open and gentle in speech. • Be aware and beware of the trap within. • Be aware of the actual appearing and the actual ceasing of the breath, to perceive it’s impermanent, unsatisfactory-ness. • Be careful in what you say, restrained in what you think, and impeccable in how you act; the practice of purity will take you a long way along the path. • Be careful when taming the tiger of the heart, for when it gets a hunger for the Dhamma, it sinks in its teeth and will not let go, doing the exact opposite of what it ought to know. 10 • Be composed within your mind; whatever doubt arises in the practice, just observe it and let it go and continue to maintain mindful restraint. • Be content with a little because you cannot look after a lot. • Be gentle with yourself, first, if you wish to be gentle with others. • Be humble rather than conceited. • Be indifferent to praise and honor and avoid blame. • Be like a frightened man with a brimming oil jar in his hand while being menaced by a swordsman saying, ‘Spill one drop and you will die!’ • Be mindful of seeing what the body is not. • Be not proud and demanding in nature. • Be peaceful and calm and wise and skillful. • Be quick and adept in awareness, so if you note a bad word or impulse is beginning to affect you, you can quickly avoid counter-reacting. • Be wise and still, with senses calmed. • Becoming detached; being detached; becoming free. • Before a meditator does any action, he should first consider whether the action is beneficial or not beneficial. • Before and after cannot arise free of interdependence. • Before sleep, it is wise to meditate, even if only for a few minutes, to focus and purify the mind. • Before sleeping, one may consider that one is lying down for the last time, and that there is no certainty that one will wake up again. Use this as a reflection to focus the mind on skillful states and banish unskillful, sensual states. • Before there can be wise reflection, there must be calm. 11 • Before we drop life’s burdens, we cannot conceive of the benefits of letting-go. • Before you can practice with your body and speech, you must first practice training the mind. • Being able to catch and eradicate an act of indulgence in the act of arising deceit is a reward beyond price. • Being attached to self, like a dog chained to a post, is the thing that makes us suffer the most. • Being avaricious makes people suspicious and pernicious. • Being caught in the view of having some special mission is just another form of bondage. • Being content with what you have, contemplate the nature of contentment. • Being detached from wrong views, the monk dwells without clinging to anything … in the world, perceiving again and again the body is just the body. • Being single is lonely; being with a partner brings friction. Selfreliance alleviates contradiction. • Being world-weary indicates the unsatisfactory-ness of consciousness of the world itself. • Belief in a soul or self was described by the Buddha as a major cause of suffering. • Believing you have a self is the cause of misery. • Beneath the half-shut eyelid of the moon, an empty gaze is peeping into my room. • Better than others? Equal to others? Less fortunate? How your vision is skewed depends on your attitude. 12 • Better than reciting one hundred words is one short line or poem, if, upon hearing it, one becomes peaceful. • Better the mind control the passions than the passions control the mind. • Better to conquer yourself than others. • Better to destroy your own evil thoughts than to do harm to another. • Better to fight passion than become the slave of depravity. • Better to move the vessel when it is unfilled. • Beware not maintaining attention to the actions of the body. • Beware of being unaware of unawareness. • Blind is this world; few can clearly see. Like birds who escape from the cage, only a few survive in a state that is safe and free. • Blocking the defilements from taking their fill by cutting off their nutriment is following the way of the Noble Disciple. • Body and mind just drop away. • Boiling water must first be calmed before it is capable of reflection. • Bondage and suffering are proportionate to the extent we let our senses dominate us. • Both a cloudy sky and a cloudy mind will eventually clear. • Both darkness and light provide insight in the heart. • Both externally and internally, the world is just all one great deception. • Both good and evil actions will bear fruit. • Both looking forward to and hanging onto delight are not right. • Brahmin, just as a skilled-trainer of horses, having taken on a beautiful thoroughbred uses the bit to develop the discipline, 13 preparatory to further training, so the Tathagata, having taken on a man to be tamed must discipline him. • Breaking the silence above the quiet canal, a cuckoo bird sings. • Breath and fire in nothingness. • Breathe in emptiness, deathlessness in fire. • Buddha nature does not reveal itself to a mind clouded by defilements. • Buddha would not teach something that is impossible to practice. • Buddhas do not keep or break precepts. Buddhas don’t keep or break anything. • Buddhism doesn’t deny any religion. It seeks a path out of suffering and goes its way. • By amending our faults, we gain wisdom; by defending our weaknesses, we betray our ignorance. • By cultivating merit-making through giving, moral conduct, and meditation, a man arrives in untroubled and happy states. • By getting rid of restlessness and worry, he dwells, calmly, with the mind, subjectively tranquilized, and purifies the mind of restlessness and worry. • By getting rid of the grasping heart which is the cardinal problem, the defilements which are lodged therein will spontaneously disappear. • By guarding your speech and actions, you can make them become graceful to the eye and ear. • By oneself is one defiled. • By their own evil doings the corrupt have created their own private hells. • By trying to lose oneself in pleasure, one falls unaware into the mire of suffering. 14 • Can breath and fire exist in a void? • Can the ‘me’ must be extracted from the ‘form?’ • Captured in the trap of desire, one remains stuck until one dies. • Care for your own personal integrity and for the welfare of others your actions might effect. • Carried aloft by worries and regrets, we spin out of control, like a kite with a broken string, swirling higher and ever higher. • Cast out all imaginings and conjectures, and all inclinations of the vain gloriousness of ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ • Catch your heart, as a blameworthy intention is about to arise; tame the wild nature of the heart, as one would tame a wild tiger. • Catch yourself in the act of thinking ‘I know!’ when, in fact, you really don’t know. • Catering to feed the heart with emotional objects born of contact is a form of wrong action. • Caught between animal need and human greed, can we be freed? • Challenging every deception, wipe out and eradicate false views and wily ways until they’re entirely eliminated. • Charmed by the body, we are unaware of the true refuge within ourselves. The true place of refuge is within. • Check the mind’s wild chasing after sense objects; otherwise, the mind will be like a rudderless ship, battered by wind and waves of sense and desire and drifting helplessly towards rocky shores. • Cherish only the banishment of unwholesome attachments. • Clean the mind and actions and speech will be refined. • Clinging is like carrying a heavy rock and not knowing how to drop and let it go. 15 • Clinging is not permanent; just as it arises, so it will end. • Clinging with adherence to one’s own views, without consideration for those of others, leads to disputation and conflict. • Colored water prevents a true reflection. • Coming and going, never being content, the mind exhausts itself. • Concentrate on the ceasing of exhaling and see what it does for you. • Concentrate on the sound of blood in your ears. • Concentration becomes slowly more and more refined, step by step. • Concentration dwells in a state, of thought-free, alertly-wakeful attention, not directed towards any object, empty of any content. • Concentration on spotless virtues acts as an anti-venom to the poisons of mental and mortal pain. • Concepts can be valid and invalid tools for understanding; ideas can be fruitful or useless; capable of bringing immense benefit or of causing enormous harm. The object of studying the Dhamma is to understand experience correctly; to be able to distinguish valid from invalid; the true from the false; the wholesome from the unwholesome. • Conceptual right view may be compared to a hand that has an intellectual grasp. Experiential right view may be compared to an eye that sees directly into the true nature of existence ordinarily hidden to the beholder obscured by greed, aversion and delusion. • Conditionality and what arises as a result, are completely balanced and impartial. • Conquer anger with lack of anger. • Conquer the angry man by love. • Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. 16 • Conquer the liar with truth. • Conquer the miserly man with generosity. • Conquer vice with virtue. • Conquering huge armies is easier than conquering one’s self. • Conscious images of objects are seen, but their causes usually remain unseen. • Consciousness is awareness of an object present through contact, which always dies away through the contact. • Constantly be aware of whatever way the body is moving or placed. • Constantly bringing the mind back and disengaging it from the tangles is the basic practice of everyday life. • Contemplate other people until you see them as skeletons. Contemplate yourself as a skeleton. Contemplate the world as empty space. • Contemplate the actions of the six senses, so you won’t tag along after them. • Contemplate the beginning of a sound and contemplate the ending of a sound. • Contemplate the objects of the six senses with non-involvement and detachment. • Contempt cannot bite or swallow you, so why be bothered by it? • Content without form and form without content; both bring disenchantment. • Contentment is greater than wealth. • Continuing meditation is a way of developing self-reliance that is steadily taken onto a firmer and more-dependable level. • Contraries are not necessarily contradictions. 17 • Control can only depend on one’s own mind. • Control the flow of the mind and watch that it doesn’t run wild. • Control your body, your tongue and your mind. • Correct the problems in your own mind, before you express your views of others. • Craving for quick results while avoiding the necessary hard work is a sure way to dissatisfaction. • Craving, desire and thirst for sensual pleasure binds beings to a cycle of painful existence and suffering. • Creating new states of being that do not even exist, how can the mind ever come to rest? • Crush self-allurement, like an autumn lily in your hand, until all sense of attachment is gone. • Cut at the tie with which ignorance binds the body to the mind. • Cut down the forest of desire and, keep clearing away the underbrush to reveal the naked truth. • Cut the rope that ties you to the post, and there is no post. • Day and night impure actions disturb, worry and provoke us, but most hold the view that this is normal and natural. • Days, minutes, time steadily consume everything. • Death and its inevitability should be faced with equanimity and tranquility. • Death carries off a person who is gathering flowers, like a flood carries away a sleeping village. • Death is a fundamental part of the law of nature that can be neither denied nor defied. • Death is a process rather than a sudden, instantaneous event. 18 • Death is as natural an event as nightfall: a manifestation of the law of impermanence. • Death, like birth and ageing is part of the cycle of life. • Deeds may totally disappear from our memory, but once performed, they leave subtle traces and impressions in the mind. • Defilement is the result of an action that has tainted, besmirched, sullied, corrupted, polluted or degraded what was pure. • Defilements sing at the top of their voices in the center of our hearts, without knowing any humility. • Delight in seclusion and solitude, and totally commit efforts of body and mind to the work of the Dhamma. • Deluded people don’t know who they really are. • Delusion clouds and blinds the mind, making it unable to discern between right and wrong actions. • Deny the reality of seemingly fixed-images, and the world will consider you to be insane. • Dependencies are not in the heart; they simply hook into it. • Desire and attachment will not disappear on-their-own. We have to pluck them out, as we would splinters or thorns stuck under the skin. • Desire and fear impermanent, unsatisfactory and non-self. They must be seen and penetrated so such suffering burns itself away. • Desire for good, when it is too great, also leads the mind astray. • Desire is an absolutely stubborn master, determined to remain in control. • Desiring that the mind will reach a state of calm is not a state of calm. • Detach the mind from self and focus only on the object. • Detached-mind observes noises and disturbances as normal actions. 19 • Detachment from, and disenchantment with, the world can help an ailing mind and body to recover again. • Develop a high degree of equipoise, keenness, subtlety, quickness of cognitive response, in the practice of mental microscopy. • Develop a mind of equilibrium. Whether getting praise and blame, do not let either affect the poise of the mind. • Developing wisdom is like growing rice; even when you don’t see the rice appearing, it is developing. • Dhamma does not prevent old age, death, hunger or fire. • Dhamma goes against the grain of delusion • Dhamma never encourages the doctrine of fatalism; true Buddhists never think of events as being pre-determined. • Dhamma placed in the heart of a Noble One will remain uncorrupted and pure. • Dhamma practice requires careful balance, neither to tense nor too slack, so that one always responds with the appropriate action to maintain the Middle Way. • Did you bring your actions, speech and thoughts with you today or did you leave them at home? • Discarded Dhamma is worthless. • Disciples of the Buddha who are fully aware take delight in compassion. • Discipline in thought word and deed guides a man along the correct path of life. • Discover the Dhamma within yourself, and become like the Buddha. • Disenchantment with the world and the impermanence of component things help bring one into health and balance. 20 • Disentangle the web of illusions and steadily gain self-reliance. • Disproportionate generosity does more harm than good. • Dissatisfaction is caused by the distraction of desiring satisfaction. • Disturbances are dependent on perceptions have no presence in the void. • Do away with self as center-point, and there is nothing to experience. • Do not attach to what is arising and ceasing. • Do not become attached to anything; likes or dislikes are like chains. • Do not desire calm and the mind may become calm of its own accord. • Do not enter and dwell in the house of your teacher’s wisdom but rather seek and find and cross the emerging threshold into your own. • Do not grasp at personal thought or personal fault or personal pain: view suffering as universal pain, based on dependent-arising. • Do the good and keep doing it again and again until happiness begins to replace pain. • Do we know there is beauty because there is ugliness? Or do we know that there is ugliness because there is beauty? What is in between? • Doctrines are only useful for pointing the mind. • Does the spoon know the taste of the soup? • Doing good deeds diminishes the effects of bad past kamma. • Doing good is not a goal that we set for ourselves but a natural response to wisdom. • Dominated by our sensations, we tend to lose our senses. • Don’t attempt to force feeling to disappear. Let it go and watch which way it goes. • Don’t be ashamed in the face of others; be ashamed for yourself! • Don’t be deluded by what is arising and ceasing. 21 • Don’t be surprised if, in the process of getting what you want, you destroy what you wanted. • Don’t become attached to the mind, or you’ll never be able to let it go. • Don’t become too sure of yourself, for you never know what is around the next bend. • Don’t blame the hole for being too deep. Look at the length of your arm. • Don’t call in outside witnesses to come in to inspect your progress in the practice. • Don’t cling to good things; if you see goodness arising, let it come and go. If you see kindness arising, let it come and go. • Don’t cling to the mental actions of the mind. Let every action just come and go with the flow. • Don’t concentrate on the evil creeper; cut out its root. • Don’t contemplate the end of the universe; contemplate the end of the moment. • Don’t doubt that the mind is basically pure. • Don’t feed the burning fire: cut off the fuel that feeds it. • Don’t feel guilty about having a foolish desire; just bring it out into the open so you can see it for what it actually is, then, set it aside and no longer be attached to it. • Don’t feel proud when shown respect; feel humble. • Don’t follow in the footsteps of old seers and sages, seek what they sought. • Don’t get hung-up in a veiled metaphor. • Don’t grab as much as possible; give as much as you possibly can. 22 • Don’t grab hold of danger. Let it go and watch where it goes, so next time, you may know better than to try to catch or try to follow it. • Don’t grab onto the need to be the need to be the shining example upon which others can feed. • Don’t hang onto distress and delusion; free your mind and focus on the Dhamma as your refuge. • Don’t harm yourself for the sake of another. • Don’t judge desire as good or bad; first, just recognize it for what it is. • Don’t keep anything. If you live like this, you are like an empty heart, empty of evil but full of wisdom. • Don’t know what; know what not. • Don’t let suffering give you a beating; train the mind to be alert and avoid the blows and the pain coming at you from every direction. • Don’t let the mind buzz around like a restless fly; train it to cease to buzz and rest in peace. • Don’t let the mind wander from the foundation post to which it is focused and anchored. • Don’t let your focus get too tense. Don’t force things to fall into line. • Don’t over-act; don’t over-react. • Don’t paint the objects of perception with fake make-up. • Don’t practice with grim determination; find delight and joy andstrength in concentration. • Don’t pull on the rice plants to try to make them longer. • Don’t rely on your own will; it is not trustworthy. • Don’t send the heart out to external things or it will come back disappointed.. 23 • Don’t set a time limit for focus in meditation; let meditation follow its own course. • Don’t start imagining that if you meditate in such-and-such a way, your distractions will go away. • Don’t starve yourself and don’t stuff yourself; find the perfect balance in-between. • Don’t tarry to pick the berries along the way; before you know it, it will be night. • Don’t think about the Dhamma; be still and silent until you hear the sound of the Dhamma. • Don’t think about where you come from or where you will go; the one is not so good and the other you may not want to know. • Don’t think that any one day is somehow exceptional or unusual. • Don’t think, ‘This desire is really me and there is something wrong with me for having this desire.’ Don’t think, ‘I feel guilty for being the way I am and I want to be different.’ Don’t think in terms of ‘I.’ • Don’t try to take advantage of others; help give others the advantage of being able to take care of themselves. • Don’t wait until the breath comes only in gasping fits and starts to turn to breathing meditation • Doubts do not grow branches and leaves. • Drinking the Dhamma, refreshed by the Dhamma, one sleeps at ease. • Drop your mistaken views and turn old ones into new ones, now! • Drowsiness or distraction must not be met with irritation or despair, but with continuing quiet observation, watching where the mind keeps wanting to go and guiding it back into sharpness and focus. • During concenrtation, discursive thinking decreases and the mind becomes stilled, like a clear pool of water. 24 • During practice of in-and-out breathing, note the distractions and the types of the distractions and the roots of the distractions until you are finally able to see them for what they are and analyze them away. • During the practice of in-and-out breathing, take-note of the feelings of the body and mind that accompany distractions and focus the penetrating, bright light of analysis on them until you are finally able to analyze them away. • Dwell having the Dhamma as an island, having the Dhamma as a refuge. • Each and every word you say throughout the day should be weighed and valued carefully. • Each phenomenon to be comprehended by right view is examined in terms of its individual nature; it’s arising, the way leading to its cessation, and its cessation. • Each small renunciation builds upon its own reward in the mind. • Ego means attachment by a short rope to endless desire and hope. • Elimination of craving and desire brings an end to the cycle of pain. • Elimination of the defilements is like trying to cut out a cancer that has already gnawed and lodges into the mind and can only be treated by radical exposure to the incisive instrument of the light of the Dhamma. • Emptiness cannot be verified; it emerges beyond truth. • Emptiness is free of the presuppositions we usually add to experience. • Emptiness is the actual core of outward and inward existence. • Emptiness must not be confused with mere, blank mind. • Empty of greed, anger and delusion, the mind is empty of stress. • Enchanted by the whiteness of teeth, we forget about toothaches. 25 • Endeavoring for realization of Nibbana is the highest blessing. • Endless coming and going, exhausting our lives in vain. • Enduring and forcing ourselves, we lack balance for correct focus. • Enjoyment of sensual pleasures is like drinking salt water to quench thirst. • Enmeshed in the tangle, within and without, how do we get out of the tangle? • Entering the forest, disturb no leaf. Entering the water, make no ripple • Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in insight. • Eradicating the cause is less stressful than suppressing the effect. • Establish moral awareness first, and be mindful of actions and speech. • Even if a person tells just one lie, there’s no telling how much evil he might do. • Even if no one else can come in to lead you astray, the demons of your own desires will invade your most intimate realms of awareness every day. • Even if one wakens the heart of wisdom, it is rare to realize a state above discipline and attainment. • Even if the flow of life is not what we want, we can stand back and watch and learn from it. • Even if the mind is caught in an unwholesome mental state, we know it as unwholesome, and the mind is not heedless. It’s like stepping on thorns. Naturally, we don’t want to step on them, but, sometimes, when we do, we can learn something from that. • Even if you have climbed a mountain almost to the top, when you stop to rest, you are still only on your way. 26 • Even if you have crossed the river almost to the other shore, take one false step, and you may reach it no more. • Even the Buddha himself, with his great accumulated store of virtue could not avoid death; he relinquished his body and let go of its burden. • Even the slightest disturbance creates a ripple in the mind. • Even those who live wholesome lives can experience suffering so long as the fruit of their earlier acts has not yet come to full-fruition. • Even though the feet may be moving in walking meditation, the heart may be going somewhere else, drifting and drawn away by delusions. • Even were bandits to savagely sever you limb from limb with a twohanded saw, if you entertained hate on that account, you would not be carrying out the Buddha’s teaching. • Even what smells bad is good for something. • Even when evil meets good fortune, evil will return to evil again. • Even when we get everything we want, we still have the feeling that something is missing, that something is still incomplete. • Events and hopes seldom agree, but those who can step back in detachment don’t worry. • Every element in the body has the stamp of death upon it. • Every man has Buddha nature within himself, so that it lies within his power to overcome all barriers and triumph even over death itself. • Every mental, volitional activity and every deed of body and speech at some time or other bears fruit. • Every moment of happiness arises and disappears. • Every turn of mind should be bent on erasing the stains. • Everyone has the potential to release himself from sorrow and pain. 27 • Everyone in the universe is as one being, and seeing one person, clearly and distinctly, is the same as seeing every person in the world. • Everything arises, comes together and falls apart again. • Everything contains the seed of its own dissolution. • Everything dies. The moment of pleasure dies. The same as the body dies. • Everything in this physical world is breaking up and dissolving— some sooner, others later. • Everything is dying in its own green going. • Everything is neutral in a state of nature. There’s nothing really wrong or right with anything in a state of nature. • Everything is on fire with desire. • Everything that you see is like a dream or illusion. A Buddha is free from karma, free from cause and effect. • Evil increases stress, while goodness decreases it. • Evil is done by oneself; by oneself is one defiled. • Evil-doers resemble a man who throws dust into the wind. • Evil-doers who denounce the wise resemble a person who spits into the wind. • Examine the aggregates as they come and go, and see that they are impermanent, unsatisfactory and undesirable • Excellent are tamed elephants, but even more excellent are those who have tamed themselves. • Except in relatively rare cases, the mind will continue to move in the old accustomed ruts and assumptions of ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ • Exercise moral restraint by sing the part of the mind that directs actions. 28 • Expectations are absolutely the worst thing you can bring into a meditation session. • Experiential right view is aroused by the gradual practice of insight meditation guided by correct understanding of the Dhamma. • Experiential right view is the penetration of the truth of the teaching in one’s own immediate experience. • Externally, there is just the dissolution of things seen, but the inner eye can penetrate internally to the deathless truth of the Dhamma. • Extinguishing the illusion of self as the source, delusive desire cutsoff the cause of suffering. • Face death, if need there be, without anxiety. • Face the enemy head-on, to see who outlasts who, if perseverance and vigilance will outlast arising emotions. • Failing to maintain resolve in our practice, we have to catch our minds and make them firm again. • Faith is like a lamp in which wisdom makes the flame burn bright. • False perceptions are based on false conceptions. • Fame and glory beckon spiritual erosion. • Favor and disgrace are to be equally feared. • Fear itself is just another one of mental defilements. • Feeling that you ‘ought to’ do something is not the true path of the Dhamma. • Feelings and body exist together according to their nature, but an Enlightened One is not affected by those feelings. • Feelings don’t last? Then, let them dissolve. The body doesn’t last? Then, let it dissolve. • Few are the people who reach the far shore. 29 • Fight the defilements without
0 Comments