•Fight the defilements without backing down. Even when you have been knocked-down, get up and fight again, as though only death could stop you from getting-up and fighting back, again and again.
• Fighting what is impermanent will do no absolutely no good.
• Find joy in the peace of renunciation.
• Find purity and cultivate it within your own mind; this is the highest form of constructive effort.
• Find the source from which all actions spring, and control the flow.
• Fire is acting in accordance with its own nature.
• Firmly rooted within the practice, we cannot be pulled out again.
• First, the past was not. Just now, the present goes.
• Five of the six doors have been closed and the mind is centered and steady.
• Fix the mind on the sublime, and let the body change with the seasons.
• Fix this firmly in your understanding: all that may be wished for fades by its nature into nothing.
• Fixed-ideas refuse to change and will always resist being set right.
• Fixed-reality based on physical sense is distorted and colored by mental events.
• Flee from yourself in order to get the distance to contend with yourself.
• Flee the company of foolish friends: greet them when you meet them, with pleasant courtesy, but avoid close familiarity.
• Focus on loving-kindness, until you are totally absorbed in feeling loving-kindness.
• Focus on striving to cut through the arising aggregates, from moment to moment in your mind.
• Focus on whatever is dark and obscure, taking that as the target for your investigation.
• Focusing your awareness on any action or object can be the heart of right concentration.
• Follow the path of goodness and evil will be confused.
• Following our impulses does not make us any happier; it makes us more miserable, especially when we don’t think of how our actions affect others.
• Following the world, the mind gets entangled in the world. It defiles itself, coming and going, never remaining content.
• Food can be medicine or food or cause for death.
• Fools fall into ruin by enjoying praise and honor.
• For he who is free of pride and appetites, who is dutiful and tolerant, like the earth, for he who is firm like a pillar, he is like a lake without mud. No new birth will come to him again. • For one of right view, Bhikkhus, right intention springs up. For one of right intention, right speech springs up. For one of right actions, right livelihood springs up. For one of right livelihood, right effort springs up. For one of right effort, right mindfulness springs up. For one of right mindfulness, right concentration springs up. For one of right concentration, right knowledge springs up. For one of right knowledge, right deliverance springs up. • For one who is freed from craving, there is no grief. • For those who actually understand nothingness, there is no fear and trembling and trepidation unto death. • Forcing the issue burns up nerves and fat and tissue. 31 • Forgiveness frees us from the burden of resentment. • Form is impermanent because it disappears. It comes into being and then vanishes. It has a beginning and an end. • Fragrance comes from the tree of decay. • Frame of reference is not limited to where we sit or walk or stand or lie. • Free from the five aggregates: material form; feelings; perceptions; mental formulations; we, we will see that the manifestations of the mind and body are impermanent and unsatisfactory and also let them go. • Freeing oneself from words is liberation. • From him who overcomes his fierce thirst, difficult to be conquered in this world, from him, sufferings will fall, as when drops of water fall from a lotus leaf. • From the passions arise worry, and from worry arises fear. • From the tree of virtue will appear the fruit of wisdom. • Full of notions and ourselves, we neglect to see beyond ‘I’ and ‘me.’ • Getting angry about what others do allows others to harm you. • Getting rid of your sense of mission is getting rid of the sense of suffering that goes with it. • Giving things away is easy compared to relinquishing self. • Go and sit up on a mountain side, and just listen to the sound of silence. • Go in search of something that is beyond death. • Go to the opposite pole, and experience the ease of not clutching. • Gold and jewels are considered good in the realm of men, as the foul and rotten is good in the realm of insects. 32 • Gone beyond attachment sure; gone beyond good and evil, sorrowless and pure. • Good actions arisen and good actions not yet arisen are brought to growth and fullness by ‘right view.’ • Good is the victory that cannot lead to defeat. • Good is to practice the way; great is that which is in accord with the way. • Good karma, persisted in, can thwart reaping of bad karma. • Grains of rice are not to be obtained by wanting. • Greed hate and delusion prevent peacefulness from arising within us. • Greed, like cirrhosis of the liver, will keep eating away at you, to the point that you cannot reverse its effect. • Grief is put to good use if it is made the motivation to develop the path to the cessation of suffering. • Guard the doors of the senses, and you secure your defenses. • Guatama just stopped talking and held up a flower. • Habits, whether good or bad, become second nature and tip one’s tendencies towards one side or the other. • Hair, nails, teeth and skin are all imperfect. Why are we all so enchanted by them? • Half-heartedness merely wastes time, and one remains the same unmitigated fool. • Happiness and anger are not things. They merely exist in the mind until they disappear. • Happiness comes not from having much but from being attached to little. 33 • Happiness comes when both your work and your words are of benefit to others. • Happiness is not right; suffering is not right; understanding that neither happiness nor suffering is permanent is the middle path of equanimity. • Happy as a loon singing to a silver sliver of the moon. • Harboring anger causes disease and obstructs the path of peace. • Has man more than the body of a beast and the cravings of a hawk? • Have you ever noticed that the things we want to do often have the opposite effect of what we expect them to? • Having been held in the clutch of such a disease as self for such a long time, it is time to uproot its cancerous roots and get it out and away forever. • Having been sired by craving and born out of ignorance, I must realize that my death is inescapable, that old age and disease are natural to my condition. • Having cleared away impurity, the mind is free from worry. • Having established awareness and calm, let them both go. • Having performed a wholesome action, it is good to keep repeating it. • Having too much of anything is too much trouble to look after. • Having tranquility at the moment of death, one is sure to be reborn in favorable surroundings. • He alone who, without ceasing, cultivates the practice of sitting alone and sleeping alone, he subduing himself, will rejoice in the destruction of all desires. • He is truly wise who calls nothing his own. • He who associates with fools suffers. 34 • He who believes in kamma does not condemn even the most corrupt, for the corrupt, too, have their chance to reform. • He who cuts off the source of attachment understands the source of his own mind penetrates the deepest doctrine of the Buddha and comprehends the Dhamma which is immaterial. • He who does not want to know will not want to listen. • He who grasps at pleasure will eventually envy the one who practices meditation. • He who has no cravings cannot be led astray. • He who has no instruction on the living Dhamma will be filled with fear and woe in face of the inevitable destruction of the body. • He who is dogged by anger is wrapped in darkness, as if blind. • He who is full of himself has no room for new learning. • He who is inspired by wrong motives bears the fruit of his own destruction. • He who is weak in will and thought will not find wisdom. • He who lives in abundance may learn to be satisfied with little. • He who lives in frustration and tension cannot relax his mind or focus his attention. • He who loves himself can never harm another. • He who rushes into lust rushes into bondage. • He who sees the base consisting of empty space acquires confidence, steadiness and decision. • He who sees the base of perception and non-perception acquires confidence, steadiness and decision. • He who sees the random sequence of mental events can never put them in order. 35 • He who sees the world as a bubble regards the deathlessness of death. • He who uses the raft to get to the other side no longer needs the raft. • He who, holding the scales, measures good and evil, he is a sage. • He whose thirst is exceedingly strong in running towards pleasure will be carried away by his desires which are set on passion. • He, who gets inflated with ego, does not float but sinks like a foundering ship. • He, who sees the world as a mirage within a bubble, regards death as deathless. • Heart of mind is one thing; heart of body is another. • Heaven and earth and I are of the same root; ten thousand things and I are of the same substance. • Heedfulness combines critical awareness and unremitting energy in a process of constant self-evaluation in order to detect and expel the defilements wherever they seek an opportunity to rise to the surface. • Heedfulness is the path to the deathless, and heedlessness is the path to death. • Held in the grip of so many mental diseases, so difficult to cure isn’t it time we made an effort to cure them by locating and eradicating the roots of infection? • Hidden emotions are like venomous snakes hidden in the grass. • Hindered by inattentive, half-hearted awareness, time flies by, life ebbs away, and we achieve nothing. • Hindrances to happiness cloud the human view so few can see through. • How can anything we realize to be foreign and void of a self cause agitation or grief? 36 • How can there be joy when the world is burning? • How can there ever be a secret when there is at least one within who knows? • How can we find balance in the ever-restless ocean of this existence? • How can you coddle a cage of bones on your lap, tied fast with sinews, plastered over with the mud of flesh? • How can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? • How can you say ‘you’ when there is no ‘who’ to answer you? • How do you let go of things? You leave them as they are. You do not annihilate them or throw them away, you just let them lie; let them be what they are. • How far can you get in and still be able to get-out? • How transient is life! Every moment is to be grasped. Time waits for no man. • How vast and wide the unobstructed sky of Samadhi. • Humanity is a network of dependency from which we must also learn to become free. • I am a conqueror. I have vanquished all thoughts, ideas, and notions of evil. • I call him a Brahmin, in this world, who is above good and evil, freed from both impurity and grief. • I do not quarrel with the world; it is the world that quarrels with me. • I have been dwelling in emptiness, Lord. • I teach that the multitudinousness of objects have no relativity in themselves but are only seen of the mind. • Ideas and imaginings are simply thought proliferations and creations and nothing more. 37 • If a bad feeling arises in your heart, don’t rush in and grab hold of it; just wait and watch with detachment until you see it going away on its own. • If a Bhikkhu should see a body discarded on the charnel ground, that is just bones of a white conch-like color, he then compares it to his own body thus: ‘Truly the body is of the same nature. It will become like this and cannot escape from that.’ • If a feeling springs up, then, let it carry on in its natural process, observing and investigating, analyzing and scrutinizing, until the fantasy or delusion dissolves and fades or falls away. • If a man who has committed many sins does not repent and purify his heart of evil, retribution will come upon his person as sure as the streams run into the ocean which becomes ever deeper and wider. • If a monk had a desire for an offering, such an offering would not be allowable for a monk. One cannot allow what is not allowable. • If a monk or nun isn’t involved in the intention of the giving and receiving of a donation, it isn’t necessary to forbid the donor from offering it. • If all causes were put to rest, there would be nothing left to detest. • If an ancient sage talks for too long, his aged-body becomes tired. • If anything is breaking up and coming apart, let it happen and let it go. • If death is inevitable, why are so many are unprepared for it? • If greed and delusion are always leading the mind, and one is always looking outside of the mind, one never learn or know anything about the inside workings of the mind. • If I am pleased by praise, others will criticize me; if I am despondent, when blamed, what will others think of me? 38 • If in a moment of physical illness, one is reminded of the spiritual progress one has already acquired, a sense of great joy can arise, which alters the bodily chemistry in a positive and healthy manner. • If it weren’t for the refraction of light, everything would appear to be black and white. • If mindfulness and wisdom are not firm enough in their foundation, the field of battle against the hordes of defilements cannot be level and calm. • If nothing can be grasped, what can be thrown away? • If on your path, you don’t meet your equal or your better, continue on alone. • If one can keep fully-focused on the present work at hand, without allowing the mind to wander, this is a form of meditation. • If one clings to one’s visions, one does not go any further along the path. • If one follows the way of the world, there is no reaching an end. • If one has used the opportunity of human life for spiritual growth, one can face the inevitability of death with relative calm, contentment and satisfaction. • If one makes the attainment of freedom from suffering one’s chief motive and so expounds or teaches the Dhamma to others this good intention is a basis for merit-making. • If one remains constantly aware of the root of anger, it will slowly begin to disappear on its own. • If one sees nature, one sees the Dhamma; if one sees the Dhamma, one sees nature. • If one speaks or acts with an impure thought, suffering follows like the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the ox. 39 • If penetration doesn’t wander off target, even for a moment, this is the way to search out and destroy the aggregates. • If sitting cross-legged is too painful, the meditator will not be able to sit for very long. The main point is to sit in a comfortable and alert way; therefore, a chair may be used. • If the Dhamma reaches the mind, this an is imperishable state. • If the flow of the heart is going contrary to the Dhamma, the results will be contrary. • If the mind attaches to suffering, the mind within the mind discerns the cause of that suffering and gradually gets to grips with it. • If the mind has an appreciation of virtue, it won’t dare do anything wrong. • If the mind is fully-established, whenever you do or say something harmful to yourself or others, you will know straight away. • If the mind is hesitant in doing the good, the pleasures of evil will have time to flow into the mind. • If the mind is still formulating conscious perceptions, it is not yet fully focused, not yet fully still. • If the mind weren’t deluded by mind objects, there would be no suffering. An un-deluded mind cannot be shaken. • If the present state of mind sows nothing, the next state reaps nothing. • If the process of investigation is not properly focused, it will result in wrong view. • If the thirst for truth were weaker than lust for passion how many of us would be able to follow the way of righteousness? • If the weed of worldliness is not uprooted, or the garden of the mind will run to seed. 40 • If there is a harmful reaction in everything you do, harmful actions will always return to you. • If there is a heaven of sixteen levels, then one who practices will go through those sixteen levels. If one is satisfied by reaching any one of these levels, one will stay at that level and not proceed beyond the heavenly levels into Nibbana. • If there is a relapse of energy and determination and practice, there will be a proportional diminishing of spiritual progress. • If there is no self to will, nothing will arise. • If there is only one Dhamma, then, all statements about true reality arise from the same source. • If there isn’t anybody to acquire suffering, who suffers? • If there were a self to will what self would arise, there would be a self that remained to see the self that was willed to arise. • If there’s no heart’s desire, there’s no mind’s desire. • If there’s nothing good to say, don’t say anything. • If water drips for long enough, rocks wear through. • If we are not empty, are we a block? • If we can clean out the mind, wisdom can come in. • If we cannot take control of our beastly nature, nature will have its way with us. • If we compare the defilements to a tree, although we may have pruned the branches, the main trunk remains uncut and is capable of sending out new branches. • If we depart from the teacher, will the teaching we have received be missing? 41 • If we develop energy in our training, we develop energy for the development of others. • If we don’t make an effort to clear the field of perception and keep it clear of distractions, this in itself is an offence against the instructions. • If we go along through life burning, burning, allowing ourselves to burn every day, the heart will burn itself out. • If we have learned to witness through awareness the ending of everything in life, we will be learning to be prepared for death. • If we have no one to look after us, we must look after one another. • If we have no selves, we have no business in looking for faults in others in which to involve ourselves. • If we have not reached purity within, our paths will be hindered by the obstacles of greed, hatred and delusion, continuing to block the way. • If we look back microscopically at the arising entity of self, we can analyze it into little separate units that have no continuity except in the impermanence of the moment of change from one impression to another. • If we owned our feelings, we could make them do anything we wanted to. • If we teach the mind to have a sense of shame and a fear of wrongdoing, we will then be restrained and caution will be developed. • If we were the owners of our minds, we would have complete control over our states of consciousness and could make such states into anything we wanted. • If you forget to monitor the mind, the mind will try to confuse you. • If you already know what you’re looking for, it’s a little easier to find the right door. • If you are afraid, it’s only your self scaring yourself. 42 • If you are already calm, it is not necessary to think; wisdom will arise in its place. • If you are blind, how can you possibly distinguish light? • If you are craving a jhana, you have sense-desire which will block you from attaining it. • If you are focused, the mind will not stray and wander away from the immediacy of the moment into areas that lead to unwholesome kamma. • If you are going to dye a cloth, first, you must thoroughlycleanse it. • If you are not living a totally moral, upright life, you cannot expect to sit down on a little pillow and find yourself secluded from sense desires and unwholesome states of mind. • If you are trying to cure all the ills of this world, you are looking at its limitations. • If you attach to the senses, you are like a fish struggling hopelessly to get off the hook. • If you attain anything at all, it is conditional. • If you avoid anxieties and nameless fears, they never become conscious, but when you allow them to arise, and analyze them, obsession moves towards cessation. • If you can become peaceful in the forest, you can become peaceful even in the city. • If you can maintain awareness without lapse, this will make an important difference, so if you want to meditate for a long time, you must be neutral, with equanimity as your foundation. • If you can’t bear just one little thing, how can you put up with everything that’s wrong with the world? • If you can’t improve on silence, don’t say anything. 43 • If you can’t see the liability of an accustomed action, you can’t see the benefit of giving it up. • If you cannot find a developed companion who is going your way, then go alone. • If you correctly see that the penalty for desire is suffering, the mind will cease grasping for gratification through desire. • If you could peel off your skin as you would a stocking, you would see the body the way it is. • If you desire freedom and happiness, you’d better get free from your self. • If you desire not to be something, you are still the victim of something you desire. • If you do not have any refuge within, then, you are constantly going out, being absorbed in books, food and all sorts of distractions, but all these endless motions of the mind are ultimately exhausting. • If you don’t see the relationship between a state of mind and what is causing it, you won’t be practicing right mindfulness. • If you get stuck in the happiness of breathing meditation, that is all that you will achieve. • If you have done a good deed, let it go. If you have contemplated an evil deed, let it go. Keep starting over Live in the immediacy of the moment. • If you have something good, you should share it. If you have right understanding, and you are able to share it, that is right action. • If you imagine the moon as a far-off place, consider that beyond that moon there is nothing but endless, boundless space. • If you just indulge in your memories and opinions, you will never live in the awareness of the moment. 44 • If you know how to see yourself, you’ll not be able to fool yourself. You’ll know the difference between right and wrong, harm and benefit, vice and virtue. • If you know that there is doubt in your mind, don’t act and speak on it. • If you let-up in your practice, you lose the immediacy of the moment. • If you love the sacred and despise the profane, you are still bobbing in the ocean of illusion. • If you observe that the serpent of wild motivation is about to arise, and you try to grab it too rapidly, you are sure to be bitten. • If you persevere in the practice, you too will see the limitations of the world and be able to let it go. • If you practice noticing how the out-breath ends, you can practice noticing how other physical and mental events end, which will makes you more aware of the conditional realm. • If you see a mental creeper creeping up, cut it out at the root with the knife of knowledge. • If you seek direct understanding, don’t hang onto the image of the Buddha. • If you simply practice with the mind, neglecting body and speech, you won’t progress very far. • If you talk too much, this will make you deaf to what others say. • If you try to gain entry through someone else’s door, you’re helping yourself anymore. • If you want to get rid of all your desires, this is just one more form of want. • If you want to hold onto something beautiful because you don’t want to be separated from it, that is suffering. 45 • If you want to know about yourself in the future, look into yourself in the present. • If you’re always giving to others and never on the receiving end, don’t worry. The good that you do will bear fruit in the end. • If your actions and speech are dirty, this is a sign that your mind is dirty. • If your happiness depends on everyone in the world saying good things, about you, then, you will never find happiness. • If your mind begins to wander into the past, catch it and bring it back into the present moment. • Ignorance means not knowing things as they truly are, and this is the chief cause of bad kamma. • Ill-gotten gain causes pain. • Illness is one of the inevitabilities of life. • In a land where everyone lies, nobody will believe the truth. • In a land where true is false and false is true, the sage knows what to do. • In a person who lives heedlessly, craving grows like a creeping vine. • In a world where blindness reigns, who will beat the deathless drum? • In access concentration awareness of the breath is still there, but it is extremely subtle and slight. • In all cases, consciousness arises completely determined by circumstances and conditions which are not under our control. • In an Arahat purity is permanently perfect. • In emptiness, there is no person: there is clarity, awareness, peacefulness and purity. 46 • In examining the source of unrest and anxiety in your mind, you will find they emerge from the diseases of greed, hatred and delusion. • In explaining the teaching, the Buddha used words and images like ‘I’ and ‘self’ and ‘mind’ and ‘we’ only to help those with limited-scope to see. Once beyond such limitations, such figurative images become unnecessary. • In insight meditation, it is important to be aware of whatever is present in the mind, no matter how weak or strong it appears to be. • In insight meditation, there is no longer the feeling that you are your body or your feelings or your thoughts: things are just as they are. • In meditation, allow all despair, fear, anguish, suppression and anger to arise and become conscious. Bring it out, into the clear light of day, and it will eventually go away. • In meditation, we would like to be conscious of the meditation object only, but this is not easy and we cannot force it. • In one who has gone the full distance, no fever is found. • In order to experience a jhana, it is necessary to temporarily abandon the five hindrances of sense-desire, ill-will, inactivity, restlessness and worrisome-doubt. • In our lives, we have two possibilities: indulgence in the world or deliverance from the world. • In solitude, we sow and cultivate the seeds of wisdom. • In the absence of Dhamma discipline, man is prone to errant conduct and actions that lead him into discord and grief. • In the beginning of the practice, the heart is still restless and distracted, still unable to settle on Dhamma principles and become self-reliant. 47 • In the Buddha’s teaching, no metaphysical entity, no soul, no spiritual self continues from one existence to another. • In the certainty of practicing purity, we become serene in our minds. • In the end, every body falls apart, even our doctors. • In the great void, there is no ‘we’ no ‘they’ no ‘self’ at all. • In the heart of hearts, there is no heart. • In the here and now, we must battle it out with the defilements and vanquish the mind’s stubborn obsessions with coarse pleasures and desire for things. • In the initial stage of supramundane penetration a stream enterer has entered with perfect confidence irreversibly on the stream to liberation. • In the middle of the sound of the wind there is stillness of emptiness. • In the movements of happiness, a man’s features suddenly change and become bright with joy. • In the place of being somebody and doing something, concentrate on being nobody and doing nothing. • In the realm of lotuses, tranquility reveals itself. • In the round of birth and aging, let go in front; let go behind; let go in between. Let go and do not come back again. • In the still water, reflecting fierce images, dark clouds move along. • In the stopping between the movements, there is supreme illumination. • In the tangled twist of the brambles in the green pines, there is no coming and going. • In the vastness of nothingness, we are but a bit of oxygen feeding an extinguishing ember. 48 • In the world of blind beings, I shall beat the deathless drum. • In this year’s spring rain, tiny leaves are sprouting from the eggplant seeds again. • In unguarded moments, one often lapses into one’s habitual, mental mind-set. In the same way, at the moment of death, one usually recalls one’s habitual deeds. • Inclining the mind towards freedom and release from the entanglements of passion and lust leads the mind to a state of natural purity and calm. • Inconstancy causes suffering and stress dependent on inconstancy. • Inconstant is the heart, as it moves from label to label. • Individuals create kamma; kamma does not create individuals. • Inside the mind is the key to the door of awareness. • Insight practice enables you to gain wisdom by seeing things as they really are rather from your own, usual egocentric perspective. • Insist on fulfilling your dreams, and you will not be happy with the world as it seems. • Instability and unreliability cause suffering. Nature is unstable and never remains the same. Everything is subject to change. • Instead of just resigning himself and leaving everything up to karma, the Buddhist makes a strenuous effort to pull the weeds and sow useful seeds in their place for the future is in his own hands. • Instead of thinking about your desires and making them more of a problem, practice leaving them alone. The more you begin to see how to do it, the more you are able to maintain a state of non-attachment. • Intellectualization without remedial action isn’t going to get us anywhere. 49 • Intense pleasure, joy, contentment, and stillness are all natural states that we are familiar with in our normal, common, everyday lives, but they can also be experienced on a level that is pure and sublime. • Intense sensuality is oblivious even to the greatest risks. • Introspection is a tool you can use as an extinguisher, to snuff out fiery feelings as you see them arising. • Investigate the world until you become weary and wary of its ways. • Inward renunciation of unwholesome mental events is accompanied by outward changes in the body and facial expressions. • Is a black bull fettered to a white bull, or is it the opposite? • Is that which is painful fit to be called ‘mine?’ • Is the flag in the wind or is the wind in the flag? • Is there a self that controls willing or does willing control self? • Is your body aware of your actions? Or are you aware of your body’s actions? • It is a delusion that any kind of static unity or underlying substance can exist in the mind. • It is a given that, if you have wisdom, you should share it with others, as an act of human-kindness, and not for your own benefit. • It is a rare opportunity to be introduced to a true teacher. • It is extremely unwise to indulge in pleasures that speed up the process of aging, disease and death. • It is hard always to be master of oneself. • It is hard for the poor to practice charity. • It is hard for the strong and rich to observe the middle way. • It is hard not to abuse one’s authority. • It is hard not to express an opinion about others. 50 • It is hard not to feel contempt for the ignorant. • It is hard to be simple-hearted in one’s dealings with others. • It is hard to be born in the present age of suffering. • It is hard to be even-minded. • It is hard to be thorough in learning and exhaustive in investigation. • It is hard to become firm in knowledge and practice. • It is hard to conquer passions and suppress selfish desires. • It is hard to disregard life and go to certain death. • It is hard to gain insight into the nature of being and to practice the way. • It is hard to hanker after that which is agreeable but not achievable. • It is hard to imagine a heaven based on the fulfillment of earthly pleasures. • It is hard to remain dispassionate when one is slighted. • It is hard to subdue selfish pride. • It is hard to teach what people least understand and conflicts the most with their own opinions. • It is hard to understand thoroughly the Way of the Buddha. • It is kamma that differentiates beings into low and high conditions. • It is like polishing a mirror which becomes bright when the dust is removed. • It is on the empty space between the spokes that the wheel depends. • It is only a favored few who know the taste of the Dhamma. • It is paradoxical the way man loves himself the most but yet is his own worst enemy. • It is quite correct to say when we have been shameless and to admit our ignorance and stupidity. 51 • It is so easy to find faults in others but so hard to find them in ourselves. • It is the delusion of self that creates deeds which disturb equanimity. • It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential to do good for oneself and others. • It is well-known that the Buddha always adjusted his discourses to meet the needs and capacities of his listeners. The Buddha talks at the level at which the listener understands and not on the level at which the listener does not understand. Hence, what may sometimes be true and consistent on a more worldly level of listening may be saying the opposite of what is true and consistent on a higher and more-refined level. • It takes close, detailed, endurance, analytical observation and understanding of the cause of suffering before it can be let go of. • It’s all so simple: in the heart of hearts, there is no heart. • It’s easy to slip back into the old states of delusion, so all that you have accomplished, through right meditation, seems to have disappeared. • It’s hard to teach what people least understand and conflicts most with their own opinions. • It’s not enough to be aware of suffering, we must also be aware of the root cause of suffering. • Jealousy prevents unity. • Joy rouses men to noble aspirations, exceeding their normal mental capacity. • Joyful lives he who is mindful in equanimity. • Just as a block of ice declines as it melts away, so the body disintegrates and gradually disappears. 52 • Just as a creeper entangles a tree, so bad intentions entangle humanity. • Just as a firmly anchored post is not shaken in the wind, so the anguish and distress of the defilements can no longer shake and afflict the mind. • Just as a man can live in nature without hating a tiger for being a tiger, so a man can learn to live amongst the beasts of human nature without blaming them for their nature. • Just as a mushroom rises, with a bit of dirt on its hood, so the life of man should be seen and understood. • Just as a shaved head cannot become the home of a louse, so a heart free of mental objects and creations cannot become a home for suffering. • Just as a skilled worker knows his limits and will refrain from straining his strengths beyond their limits, so a skilled meditator will be careful not to strain himself beyond his limits. • Just as dawn is the forerunner and first indication of the rising sun, so right view is the forerunner and first indication of wholesome states. • Just as every action is accompanied by a shadow, even so, every volitional activity is inevitably accompanied by its due effect; kamma is like a potential seed which can be likened to the growing of fruit on a tree. • Just as fire and water illustrate cause and effect, so grasping and letting-go give us cause to reflect. • Just as gold is tested in fire for purity, so you may test the teaching in the fire and energy of your own practice. • Just as hearing thousands of meaningless words brings stress and confusion, hearing one meaningful word can bring peace. • Just as heedfulness is praised, heedlessness is always censured. 53 • Just as iron rusts and eats itself, so, by failing to practice, we eat into ourselves. • Just as lack of repair ruins a house, so lack of wholesome actions ruins a life. • Just as life’s little blows leave their traces and indentations, so all our little good deeds, done and forgotten, leave tiny traces of good intentions and meritorious intimations. • Just as one feels loving-kindness, when seeing a dearly-beloved being, so one should extend one’s love to all creatures. • Just as pure food becomes impure when it falls and comes into contact with the earth, so pure Dhamma is corrupted when it is touched by the defilements of the six senses. • Just as seeping venom fills the body, carried in the current of the blood, an evil thought that finds its chance will spread and permeate the mind. • Just as the bowels expulse excrement, so the mind expulses impure and comment content. • Just as the composition of a body of water, such as the sea, is everchanging, so is the body of man ever-changing. • Just as the excellent charioteer, skilled in the taming of excellent horses tames a thoroughbred, so shall I, standing firm in the five powers, tame you. • Just as the highest notes cannot contact the ear and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so, perhaps the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense are equally unintelligible. • Just as the horizon of what one sees as the sea has no basis in reality, so the apparent mental horizon of the mind is based on temporality and non-reality. 54 • Just as the spider rushes and binds the insects that fly into its web, so we can catch the defilements where they are arising and return back into our center again. • Just as the taste of the ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt, so the doctrine and discipline of the Dhamma has but one taste, the taste of freedom. • Just as the wind blows on everything, so the Buddha lived with a heart of loving-compassion for all. • Just as water has one essence but takes on the shapes of the vessels that contain it, so the teaching of the Dhamma must be shaped to fit the minds of those who are being instructed and trained in it. • Just as we nourish the body, so we should nourish the mind. • Just as we paint our fingers, so we color our thoughts. • Just as we shy away from pain and suffering, so we must incline towards its remedy in the antidote of the Dhamma. • Just as when one candle lights a thousand lamps, it cannot be said that the original lamp is exhausted. • Just as when we are born, into the world, we bring inherent nature with us, so, when we die, we follow inherent nature out of it. • Just doing anything we please is a form of mental disease. • Just get started and keep going until you get good at it, and then keep going because you don’t want to go back to where you were before. • Just hearing directions from the healer on how to effect a cure is not enough. Only through following the healer’s directions and taking the medicine and following the prescribed procedure can we effect a cure. Only this way, will the patient be able to free himself from his suffering. 55 • Just learning the Dhamma by rote goes contrary to the purpose of the teaching. • Just like a lake that has been muddy and unclear for hundreds and hundreds of years, so one’s mind can suddenly become clear. • Just note beginning, appearing and ceasing. The sensory realm is all about arising and ceasing, beginning and ending. • Just now, the body is solid and hard, like a chunk of ice, but it too will inevitably melt-away and disappear. • Just retreating into stillness to escape the dangers of defilement does not cut out the root. • Just watch any action that you are doing; sweeping, washing, pounding, cutting, and focus on that action so intently you do not think of anything else. • Kamma is action that results in reaction. • Kamma is personal; Dhamma is not. • Kamma is the result of our own past actions and our own present doings. We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness or misery. We create our own heaven. We create our own hell. We are the architects of our own fate. • Kamma means any kind of intentional action, whether mental, verbal or physical in thought, word and deed. • Keep bailing out the sinking ship of defilement, until it finally floats lighter upon the sea. • Keep bringing the mind back to the breath, bringing it back, bringing it back, and bringing it back, until the mind finally locks into the breath. • Keep bringing the mind back to the object of meditation again and again no matter how many times it slips away. 56 • Keep straight on the path without deviating due to the sensuous lure of the senses or the stagnating influences of indolence and complacency. • Keep your mind alive and free without abiding in anything anywhere. • Keeping breathing is normally no problem It’s only movement of wind. • Keeping the past and the future out of the present requires energy, endurance and perseverance. • Know exactly how the lotus blooms. If it doesn’t bud and flower, know why it is withering and rotting at the root as a result of your own inattention to controlling the heat of your desires. • Know the objects of mind. See them as they arise. See them as they go. • Know through not-knowing, because not-knowing knows. • Knowing the primal mind separated from body brings release from worry and error. • Knowing we are being dragged-down by deceit and coercion, yet we remain complacent and negligent. • Knowing when the body is in tension and what it is going to do may serve as a warning to you. • Knowledge that frees the mind from bondage emerges only from intuitive insight, not from amassing doctrinal knowledge alone. • Lack of understanding between good and bad, right and wrong, is one of the principle causes what is wrong within this world. • Lacking the driving power of right motivation, we may achieve calm and equanimity but still not have the power of penetration to follow the path through to its final goal. • Lay people would bring money to offer the Venerable Ajarn on a tray. He would extend his receiving cloth, holding it at one end, but, when 57 they brought the tray forward, to lay it on the receiving cloth, he would retract his hand from the cloth. After, he would simply abandon the money where it lay. • Learn by following the rules to eventually forget them. • Learn self-control before controlling others. • Learn to control the raw, natural instincts of the heart and train it to go the opposite way. • Learn to let go of both likes and dislikes alike. • Learn to let go of unhappy mind objects and happy ones too. • Learn to persevere alone and live close to the bone. • Learn to undermine the roots of the defilements until they gradually weaken and lose their hold. • Leaves and branches sway in the early morning breeze just at break of day. • Let a person avoid wrong actions, as a person who loves life avoids poison. • Let all the old burdens of self-indulgence fall away. Let the delusions disband and proceed on the path to wisdom. • Let go of the firm, habitual resistance against death. • Let mindfulness direct the work of investigation, being constantly alert, and let wisdom screen and process the information to achieve a more and more subtle understanding. • Let muddy water be still, and it will gradually clear. • Let observation come and go, and, eventually, you will know that there is no self observing. There are only impermanence and change and flow. • Let the Dhamma sweep through the mind to clean it out. 58 • Let us live in joy, free of greed among the greedy. • Let’s open up and clear out our minds of all its afflictions. • Letting go of all pleasures, calling nothing one’s own, the wise one cleanses the pleasures of his mind from within. • Letting go of burdens eases and lightens the mind, and we change into something we never were before. • Life can be compared to a well-guarded fort on the frontier, with defenses within and defenses without. Thus let a man guard himself. • Life is as uncertain as a blossom in the wind. • Life is full of illusions held by people with different delusions. • Life is hemmed-in by death. • Life is like a garden. Wherever you see a weed, pull it out and replace it with a good seed. • Life is like a line drawn in the water. • Life is like the dew-drop that may fall off the end of a blade of grass at any moment. • Life is not an equation, but rather a riddle to be resolved. • Life rushes towards death like a gushing stream. • Life, like a fragile pot, can unexpectedly drop and burst into bits. • Light the lamp of the mind with the fire of awareness. • Like a deep lake, clean and clear, so a well-centered mind remains unruffled and calm. • Like a ship firmly anchored in the storm, a virtuous monk is anchored in the practice. • Like a tamed battle elephant, the tamed man is one who suffers abuse silently. • Like a tusker stuck in the mud, lift yourself out of the muck. 59 • Like a withered leaf, the messenger of death comes near to you. • Like arrows fired outwards, dirty-looks are fired back. • Liking, as long as it is neutral and natural, does not yet cause suffering; the cause of suffering is grasping and attaching to liking with desire. • Listen to the mind and bring the desires of the mind into clear consciousness. Arouse all the hopes, desires and disappointments and clarify the unsatisfactory nature of desire until you can lay it aside. • Listen with a one-pointed mind to what you hear and let it go. • Little good comes merely intending to clean your house; little good comes from only intending to clean your mind. • Little, green stalks reach upwards, as withered, brown stalks hang down. This is nature’s way. • Live close to the bone and learn to die alone. • Live every act fully as though it were your last. • Live in the immediacy of the moment, free from the burden of mental images about what may have occurred in the past or what might occur in the future. • Living in the open air is one of the ascetic means to purification. • Living with no home with few wants, that is what we call Brahma. • Look ahead and see where you are going. If your course is dangerous or will cause pain, change your heading. • Look at this mass of human flesh, soon to be the fare of carrion beasts; all decked-out with flowers and sandalwood, soon to be the provider for others. • Look inside the mind; the bark is not the heartwood of the birch tree. 60 • Look within your own heart, and you will understand the Dhamma within yourself. • Looking at life, we notice how it continually moves between contrasts. • Looking at the faults of others only embitters the heart. • Lose your attachment to freedom and you may be free. • Love imparts to equanimity its selflessness, its boundless nature and even its fervor. • Love is transient. Hate is transient. Good is transient. Evil is transient. • Love that puts a squeeze on the heart is always a cause for concern. • Love, compassion and sympathetic joy continue to emanate from the mind and act upon the world, but, being guarded by equanimity, they cling nowhere and return un-weakened and un-blemished. • Love, rightfully understood, is the indispensable and essential foundation, no less for the growth and purification of the individual, as for the construction of a peaceful, progressive and healthy society. • Loving-kindness is the Lord Buddha’s medicine for hatred and cruelty. • Loving-kindness ought to be brought to the point where there are no longer any barriers between persons. • Maintain detachment from both the pleasant and the unpleasant, because both pleasure and pain are merely temporary. • Maintain equanimity and cheerfully accept the ups and downs of life. • Maintain focus on the momentary passing of events and phenomena, in the mind or the body, as they are arising and passing away. • Make sure the mind is firmly established within and that there are no thoughts of self, only stabilized mind. 61 • Make sure you don’t allow the mind to wander away; keep it within rather than sending it out looking for various moods and feelings. • Make the decision whether to be a warrior or a victim in the struggle to overcome the rampant horde of raging defilements and desires. • Make the effort to analyze within, searching for the understanding to help along the way and constantly sharpen investigation • Make the heart brighter and grander. Make it independent and free of its wild tendencies. • Make the mind so still that it isn’t doing any work at all, because it is not distracted in any way. • Make truth your island; make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge. • Make yourself a refuge unto yourself. • Make yourself an island unto yourself; make yourself a refuge. There is no other refuge. • Make yourself an island; purge yourself of impurity; and you will be free. • Mal-proportioned generosity always evokes animosity. • Man has more bones than brains and more mental delusions than physical pains. • Man walks a delicate balance between good and evil; purity and defilement; progress and decline. He seeks happiness; he fears suffering, loss and death. We are free to choose between good and evil, and we must bear the responsibility for our decisions. • Many followers became enlightened while listening to the Lord Buddha’s Dhamma, correctly positioning their hearts in the present, without concern for the past or the future, being wholly receptive to the taste of the Dhamma the Lord was presenting. 62 • Many is the home that has broken down in tears. • May all beings be freed from enmity distress and anxiety; may all beings guide themselves to a blissful heart. • May all living-beings be safe, happy and joyful. • May I be a medicine for the sick and weary, nursing them until their afflictions are gone forever. • May I be as soft as a flower and as hard as a rock. • May I be firm and resolute and have a strong will. • May I be well and happy; may all those near to me be well and happy; may all those neutral to me be well and happy; may all living beings be well and happy. • May I develop the perfect balance of mind that can never be upset. • May no living being deceive or despise any being in any state. • May no one work another’s undoing or even slight him in any way. • Meditate on the coming and going of the little things in life, preparatory to meditating on bliss and pleasure, tranquility and calm. • Meditation implies renunciation of old cravings and habitual likes and dislikes, and will not be successful unless one has the power to restrain the six senses. • Meditation means watching how your mind is moving, and, then, observing where the nature of mind is moving and letting it go with the flow. • Meditation on the falling and rising of the abdomen, the raising and placing of the foot, or on the actions of other parts of the body may all be considered forms of right concentration, as long as one focuses on the rising and falling of the moment, the beginning and end of an action. • Meditators only listen to things that are present and true. 63 • Meekness is the most powerful of all. • Mental and physical reactions come and go like clouds in an empty sky. • Mental chains can only be broken by mental effort. • Mental perceptions do not come in fixed, coherent sequence, but rather, in random order, like little bits of a puzzle that we can’t quite piece together into one picture. • Mere suffering exists; no sufferer is found. • Merit cannot be stolen. • Merit comes through the respecting of others’ feelings, privileges, property and life; regarding others with deference, esteem and honor; avoiding degrading or insulting or interrupting them; and refraining from offending, corruption or tempting them. • Merit or boon means giving up what is wrong. • Merit purifies and cleanses the mind; merit has the power of purifying the mind of greed, hatred and delusion. • Merit will come through the good intentions of one who meditates on the in-and-out breath or on the impermanence of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind as mind objects, on the impermanence of suffering and of self. • Merit, the Buddha declared, cannot be destroyed, even by fire or an earthquake, nor can water drown its effect. Thieves cannot steal it. It cannot be taken away by others. • Meritorious actions improve the quality of the mind. • Meritorious actions raise the level of the mind, refining and purifying it of the gross mental defilements. • Midnight. No waves, no wind. The empty boat is filled with moonlight. 64 • Mind follows mental distractions wildly, like water ebbing and flowing, this way and that, seeking its lowest level. • Mindfulness and wisdom subdue and eradicate the defilements, systematically bringing about the cessation of suffering. • Mindfulness means watching what is occurring at the present moment in the body and in the mind. • Mindfulness notes the transitory qualities of feelings attaching to sensations as being pleasant or unpleasant; neutral or detached; worldly or supramundane, and simply lets them pass by. • Mindfulness of breathing can also be developed while standing, walking or lying down. • Mindfulness of breathing is preparation for our last breath. • Mindfulness of just what you are doing, just at the moment, whatever it is, can bring joy and preclude suffering. • Mindfulness of mental objects notes the conditionality and the inessentiality of things. • Mindfulness of mind observes every state of conscious that arises and notes whether such states are passionate or passionless; aggressive or free from aggression; deluded or un-deluded. • Mindfulness protects the heart by not allowing it to stray outside and catch fire and return in flames. • Mindfulness shall cease in mindlessness and peace. • Monks should associate with those who give what is hard to give; do what is hard to do; and bear what is hard to bear. • Monks, I know not of any other single thing that brings such bliss as the mind that is tamed, controlled, guarded and restrained. • Monks, I know not of any other single thing that brings such woe as the untamed, uncontrolled, unguarded and unrestrained. 65 • Moral conduct is, in each instance, the clearly intentional restraint from unwholesome actions. Shame and fear are its proximate cause. • Moral practice has a beginning, has middle, and has an end. If the beginning is beautiful, the middle will be beautiful, and the end will be beautiful. • Moral practice is like looking after and cleaning your dwelling, with both interior and exterior kept pleasant and beautiful. Just so the abode of the mind should be kept clean and well-cared for. • Moral practice must be in balance with meditation practice. • Moral purity affords power which may work when all other remedies have failed. • Mortals are full of worry about being hungry. • Mortals mistakenly insist that there is no retribution. • Most people want to do good to gain merit, but they don’t take the time to do it. • Mourn not for one who will not return to this world any more. Rise up and escort and follow him through the door. • Move without moving, and this will be the mind. • Muddied water must settle before there can be reflection. • My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is undoable, to speak the speech that which is inexpressible, and to be trained in discipline that is beyond discipline. • Narrow and narrow and narrow the focus until perfection is completed. • Nature just carries on, as it has always done, whether we are aware of it or not. • Neither mind nor body, belong to me; neither are mine. 66 • Neither pleasant nor unpleasant feeling are, paradoxically, the hardest to perceive, as their characteristics are the absence of pleasure and pain. • Never hold onto the things you should give away. • Never through hatred or anger wish harm on any other. • Never use the exception to a rule as an excuse. • No angry man sees the Dhamma. • No appearance of mind is the other shore. • No conceptual idea is complete. • No conscious moment can possibly exist without pre-existent consciousness. • No enemy relishes an enemy coming to a good end. • No enemy relishes an enemy’s having fame. • No enemy relishes an enemy’s having friends. • No enemy relishes an enemy’s lying in comfort. • No enemy relishes in an enemy’s beauty. • No enemy relishes in an enemy’s prosperity. • No enemy relishes in an enemy’s riches. • No entity taken for examination is an independent entity, locked-up in itself, but part of a web of conditionality, part of arising processes that can be terminated by understanding and eliminating the cause that allows them to rise into being. • No longer needing wealth, one sees it as poison. • No matter how strong the wind blows and blasts, the mountain cliff side remains impassive and feels no pain. • No one purifies another; one purifies oneself. 67 • No part of the body has consciousness of body; consciousness of body is all in the mind. • No single entity of self passes from moment to moment. • No sufferings attach to a person who is not attached to name and form. • Noble and selfless deeds provide the best defense against the hard blows of destiny; it is never too late for good actions. • Non-void-ness is disturbance. • Not a moment should escape scrutiny, for, he who lets the wrong moment slip by and escape, may suffer the evils of hell. • Not clinging, we approach the opposite pole. • Not earth nor space nor sky can become Nibbana. • Not even if it rained gold coins would we ever have our fill. • Not getting involved with things means knowing without clinging, knowing things, while at the same time, laying them aside and letting them go. One still experiences happiness; one still experiences suffering; one still experiences mind objects and mental states, but one doesn’t cling to them. • Not only are the smallest particles, molecules of matter, in constant motion, but they can change from particles to waves depending on circumstances. • Not only other people’s, but even our own minds can upset us. • Nothing in the cry of the cicadas suggests they are about to die. • Nothing is certain at all! Discard it all! • Nothing is ever the same for even two milliseconds. • Nothing really matters in this world; it’s only that our hearts go out and get involved.
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