• Nothing that happens to us originates from an outer hostile world foreign to ourselves.
• Nothing to do and nothing to gain; we revert to nothingness again.
• Nothing to revert to and nothing to receive.
• Now that I know that I am dying, I can relax.
• Now there is no one to love me, I finally feel free.
• Nurturing the patient’s mental condition helps heal his physical condition. • monks, you must not walk on the way as the ox is attached to the wheel.
• Observe and follow the path for long enough and things start happening on their own.
• Observe from whence and for what reason mental distractions come, slowly getting at their roots, so you can finally analyze them away.
• Observe the nature of the mental and physical phenomena until you see the nature of impermanence: the un-satisfactoriness of insubstantiality and the un-graspable-ness of any sense of unchanging self or soul, and, thereby gradually weaken the attachments to perception that prevent enlightenment.
• Observe whatever action you are committing and be sure you are doing a good action.
• Observe yourself observing until unwholesome states slowly disappear.
• Obsessive thoughts can take us to the severest hell straight away.
• Offer your merit to all sentient beings and take the blame for your sins yourself.
• On the journey through Samsara, avoid following the wrong options. 69 • On the placid pond, the silver sky reflects between darkling leaves. • On the white poppy lies a butterfly wing, a keepsake of morning. • Once a man or an animal is moved by the urge to take up the chase, he will use any means, fair or foul, vexatious or vicious, to chase after and catch the prey, however long his prey tries to run and hide and elude him. • Once attention is locked into stability of mind, excluding all moods and feelings, the result will lead into tranquility. • Once having shaken-off the dust of defilement, and once cleaned of any stain or trace of defilement, the heart is poised and wholly unperdurable. • Once one is seeing things as they really are, one knows the mind as what it is and knows the mind objects as what they really are. One knows the mind as separate from the mind objects; one knows the mind objects as separate from the mind. Once one knows these two phenomena as what they are, whenever they come together, one is mindful of their separateness, one is aware with detachment, mindful of the fact that the two are separate and the one is watching the other. • Once the heart is purged through enduring exertion, it will be left bright, serene and happy. • Once the liquids in the body are lost into the ground and the atmosphere, the bodily parts and elements begin to dry-out and steadily dehydrate until they finally crumble into dust, and, then, the dust and the earth merge into one. • Once the mind is fully-centered, then, whatever you are doing, sitting, standing or lying down, will remain centered at all times. 70 • Once the mind is watching disintegration and cessation, it doesn’t have to follow anything anywhere. It is simply focusing on disintegration and cessation. • Once the sword is sharp, once the mind is concentrated, it is much easier to cut through the bonds of ignorance. • Once we are adepts, it is actually more enjoyable to look inside than out. • Once we drop the rock of wrong understanding, we are free to pursue the path of right understanding. • Once we have become focused in practice, we find that what we used to do before doesn’t satisfy us anymore. • Once we have penetrated to the truth, we are freed of everything, and only peace remains. • Once wisdom has completely wiped out all infiltrators, every kind of defilement will disappear. • Once wisdom has fathomed the truth, the conjurations and suppositions will be seen for the frauds that they are, having been designed by those masters of deception, the defilements. Wisdom, then, follows through with the clean-up work. • Once wisdom has totally shattered and cleared the defilements away, the heart will be transformed into the state of purity. • Once you come to understand the Dhamma, following the Lord Buddha, the mind will become bright, calm and pure. • Once you reach the other shore, the other shore doesn’t exist anymore. • Once you see your faults clearly, you can cut them away without delay. • Once you see your own nature, the whole Pali Canon becomes so much prose. 71 • One becomes experienced in treating and eradicating the subtle diseases of the mind. • One can easily fall into the smell and feel of a woman, but it is very hard to get back out. • One can master the mind and escape the flood of passions and find the island which no flood can overwhelm. • One can reduce one’s own suffering by understanding others’ sorrows. • One cannot avoid dangers that one has not yet come to see or cultivate benefits that one does not yet know. • One cannot take what one has seen as meaningful or dependable. • One day of life lived in virtue and contemplation is worth a hundred years of unrestrained vice. • One day, the cart will break down and fall apart, but the elements of its components will continue moving along. • One develops the skill to watch the mind and see where it wants to go, whether to the past to the present or to the future. • One does not know if one will be alive even one second from now. • One does not practice with the goal of heavenly abodes or Nibbana. One practices to be free of the cause of suffering. • One gains merit from teaching and writing about the Dhamma. • One generation spends a lifetime un-teaching what the previous generation has taught. • One instant is eternity: eternity is now. • One may be surprised when one begins meditation that one experiences more troubles than before. 72 • One may gain benefits in the present by listening to Dhamma talks and in the future resulting from the fruition thereof. • One meditates to calm the grosser mental defilements and develop the mind to gain real wisdom—beyond the ken of book learning—real wisdom gained through realization. • One moment of observing true reverence is better than making a thousand years of merit. • One must cease all thoughts and maintain the heart in emptiness. • One must follow a wise one who rebukes one for one’s thoughts as one would follow a guide to some hidden treasure. • One must use oneself as the standard for deciding how to treat others. • One must use thought to stop thinking. • One needs to understand suffering before one is able to get rid of it. • One of the hardest things to overcome is your own opinions, but, only when you do so, can you have an empty mind. • One of the imperatives of the boon of wisdom is to impart it to others. • One of the most striking features of Buddhism is the consistency of its teachings. In the Theravada, at least, everything bears the characteristic stamp of one mind; it is a masterpiece of homogeneity; considering the tremendous scope and breadth and the minuteness of its analysis, this consistency gives us a sense of awe. • One possessed of joy finds serene calmness in which liberation and wisdom arise. • One quality of the Dhamma which the Lord Buddha has pointed-out is what is visible here and now, to be seen and experienced within ourselves. • One should follow the good and wise, as the moon follows the path of the stars. 73 • One should not be discouraged if one seems to be striving without results, continuing striving eventually brings results. • One should not blame oneself for having feelings that are natural to the way of the world. One should cultivate awareness of such feelings and eradicate their root. • One should not make an opponent out of one’s surroundings. Things are the way they are and that’s how it is. • One should not send one’s mind anywhere or allow it to go anywhere. • One should refrain from drinking alcohol and refrain from gettingdrunk on the notion of Nibbana. • One should train others in meditation after one has become proficient in it oneself. • One single day lived in awareness of the transient nature of life is greater than a hundred years lived in unawareness of birth and death. • One thing is certain, the way of all things is uncertain. • One way to realize that the world is only an illusion is to view your self as others do and realize that their image of you isn’t true. • One who does not look for success by unfair means is wise and virtuous. • One who engages in combat has already lost the battle. • One who has cut every feather does not get ruffled. • One who has entered the path, but not yet reached its end, has transformative vision, which has revealed the ultimate truths underlying existence, but which must still be developed in order to complete the process of full-transformation. • One who is awakened knows that what he knows is beyond words. • One who is lost in scriptures and teachers, such a one will not go beyond suffering. 74 • One who is mindful observes what objects pass into the mind and the reaction that takes place within the mind when experiencing them, and one who is mindful will automatically take them up as objects for contemplation of what is right and what is wrong and what is neutral. • One who is well-developed in loving-kindness is happy, both when awake and asleep. • One who knows himself and who is firm in his practice will not stray from the path. • One whose wrong-doings are eradicated by good conduct lights up this world like a moon that is freed, emerging out of a cover of clouds. • One’s point of view is already colored by the motives arising behind mental perceptions. • One’s self is one’s own protector. • Only a Buddha can see all the causes and conditions determining and sustaining what happens in human existence. • Only a man who constantly leads an upright and compassionate life is really dear to himself. • Only Dhamma practice can steadily uncover and enlighten the darkness that enshrouds the heart. Then, peace and happiness will arise. • Only he who is endowed with purity and firm in righteousness will have the skill to avoid actions that lead to shame and dread. • Only the body exists—not a ‘soul’ or a ‘self’ or an ‘I.’ • Only the body is locked in a jail; let not mind be imprisoned with it. • Only the really adept who have sat in meditation for long periods can actually perceive ordinary life as meditation. • Only those who have let go know that true practice is possible. 75 • Only through careful investigation can we reject what is detrimental and gain confidence in cultivating that which is truly beneficial. • Only through right view and loving-kindness can the mind be directed towards the true cessation of suffering. • Only when one loses one’s fear of losing detachment is one ready to clear and empty the mind of any remaining sense of detachment and allow it to gradually fill with wisdom. • Only when one sees how lust burns up the one who indulges in it, only then, does lust seem worth relinquishing. • Only when we are free of the burdens of clutching, can we take the next steps on the path to enlightenment. • Ordinary minds have no awareness of the causes and conditions of the states they assume they are experiencing. • Ordinary moments may become the objects of meditation, if one observes them merely as events in flux and restrains the fluff of the mind from randomly floating about. • Our ascent to the peak, as we imagine it, is difficult and steep, but once we reach the top, we see that the path was actually horizontal, and all we would have had to do was stop. • Our enemies are weakness, discouragement, depression, stupidity, dejection and confusion. If we don’t face up to them without flinching, we die like cowards. • Our every action will be known to the teacher who is our own heart. • Our hearts and minds must be perfected through practice of such qualities as kindness, compassion, empathy and equanimity. • Our human trait of continually seeking support in other people develops eventually into a personal habit; it’s always been like that all throughout time all over the world. 76 • Our inheritance becomes a heavier and heavier burden, until we cannot carry it any more. • Our minds invent devices to shore up our defenses. • Our motives, the causes we put into effect, feed and fuel the fire of suffering that poses as our selves. • Our sense of physical reality gets blown out-of-proportion to the degree that our mental views are seen with distortion. • Our suffering comes from the attachment we have to ideals and complexities we create about the way things ought to be. We will never what we should be according to our highest ideals. • Out of ignorance, we attach to desires for sense pleasures. • Overheating of the brain can cause a nervous breakdown or leads to violence and insanity. • Pain arises and disappears every moment; but, because we cannot see or feel it arising, we think of it as one continuous, objective thing. • Pain is just built-in impermanence; don’t attach to it. Where there is no involvement, there is no suffering. • Pain only intensifies when we fight it. • Painful feelings heat-up and burn the body until it becomes overdone. • Painful is attempted communication with the un-awakened. • Paradoxes are there to be resolved. • Pass the six watches of the day focused on the moment as it arises and flits away. • Passing hurried-judgment doesn’t make one a judge. • Pay attention to cessation of things, by concentrating on the ending of the breath. 77 • Peach blossoms come apart in the spring wind. Branches and leaves grow. Doubts go. • Penetrate through to the deeper levels and discern the deceit and cunning of the defilements in the mind. • Penetration must be purely focused; otherwise, the slightest inattention will be disruptive. • People always tend to misunderstand because they are always interpreting everything from their ego views. • People are driven by what they want and cannot see what others want to give them. • People are impatient and irritable and want to see results right now, and, thus, incapable of waiting for the arising of the right moment • People become much more tired sitting in meditation while practicing intensively than they do when they relax a bit. • People driven by fear cannot find safe refuge. • People inflict pain on others in selfish pursuit of their own satisfaction. • People never seem to want to understand that what they do can be seen from another point of view. • People posit questions and make assumptions based on their own knowledge. How can you make assumptions about what you do not yet know? • People practicing mindfulness of awareness of the arising and the cessation of things are afraid of losing detachment from these objects. They just want to stay isolated, stay alone in a cave, and stay away from the world. • People these days suffer from the same old thoughts. 78 • People who are out-of-touch with themselves are unaware they are sleeping with a skeleton. • People who are terrified of sights of skeletons don’t realize that if they did not have bones, they could not walk through the temple grounds. • People will think you are insane if you tell them that pleasure is just as harmful as pain. • People, like fruit in the wind, fall at different stages of growth. • People, who are really attached to themselves, are their own worst enemies; they go about doing things to themselves that even their own worst enemies would not think to wish on them. • Perception is impermanent; memory fades into forgetfulness. • Perform every action with mindfulness in the moment. • Persevere with analytic investigation, without being excited by the objects of attachment themselves. • Persevering through all six watches of the day, illuminate the lamp of the mind and drive the darkness away. • Phenomena do not exist and can not be owned by any person or group. • Physical pleasure increases stress; spiritual pleasure is free of distress. • Pierce the balloon of illusion with a pin, and you’ll be out rather than in. • Place yourself among bad people and bad things will happen. • Placidly upon the pond, the silver sky reflects, between darkling leaves. • Playing with children, reciting verses, we see the wise fool. • Pleasure and pain were the same a thousand life-times ago. 79 • Pleasure, bliss, tranquility and calm are also states that have a beginning and an end. • Polishing your teeth to become bright and white is a way of fooling your self with your own bones. • Practice for practice’s sake is wrong view. • Practice of meditation must be pursued as continuously as possible: and not just periodically for shorter or longer periods. • Practice only to go beyond suffering; pay absolutely no attention to amulets and magic spells. • Practice Right Concentration in both tranquility meditation and insight meditation. • Practice so you can keep abreast of what is arising in the mind, at every instant, ahead of any action arising, ready to hinder any arising wrong action. Do this to the point where mindfulness becomes effortless. Remain ever-mindful of the impulse motivating every action before every act. • Practice the art of watching the heart; watch what the heart desires, without transgressing against what is right. • Practice using suffering as the meditation object, until you can finally see it for what it is, and then just let it be the way it is. • Practice with equanimity; if there’s nothing to cause concern, there’s nothing to remedy. • Practicing with the mind may be compared to working with a coarse, rough material object. Take for example a tree trunk: initially, you have to remove the branches and knots and roughage, then, the roots, then, the bark, and so on. Eventually, you will be able to develop a smooth, perfect plank with which to perform further work. • Pride and conceit are usually the last deceptions to go. 80 • Projects are just another form of attachment. • Psychological stress always impedes the cognitive process. • Pulled every-which-way by our senses, our visions fall apart. • Pure morality and purified states of mind are pathways leading onto even higher planes. • Purification, like all other mental activities, is a cause and effect process. • Purity and impurity arise within self; no one can purify another. • Put out the flames before your head catches on fire. • Qualify for the merit to deserve the good you receive. • Quest for the supreme security from bondage. • Quiet the body, clear the mind, and pierce through calmness, joy and delight through bright light into the endless, empty void. • Radiance and peace arise from within the practice of purity through morality concentration and wisdom : this is the Dhamma. • Radiant thoughts of loving-kindness may serve as a spiritual balm in the face of death, easing negative feelings of anxiety and grief and distress. • Rain does not exist; there is only raining. • Reaching the end of striving for wisdom is the goal of striving. • Read the message written in your own kamma, and even suffering will become your friend. • Real friendship is based on motives of virtue and not on mutual enjoyment of pleasures or profits. • Realize cessation and abide in emptiness, through being awake, alert, and no longer attached. 81 • Realize your own true welfare; don’t harm yourself for the sake of another. • Realizing the transience of things, the mind no longer grasps at them. • Regard your body as a vessel: a simple boat for getting here and there. • Rejoice in the happiness of others as though it were your own. • Rejoicing in others’ well-being and in their merit is basis for merit. • Release from suffering is not something that takes place in a moment. • Release the arrow and follow it straight to the core. • Remain steadily, mentally healthy, even after the body becomes weak and enfeebled. • Remember all the things you deliberately tried to forget, so all the hatred and anger that you have suppressed will rise to its peak and burn itself away. • Remove the conflicts that infect human relationships and which bring such immense-suffering to the individual, society, and the world as a whole. • Remove the thorns and remove the pains. • Renunciation is not getting rid of things of this world but accepting that they pass. • Replace an evil-done-deed with one of kindness to bring a ray of brightness into the world. • Replace fear with its opposite courage. • Respond appropriately, with words or with silence. • Resting and sleeping may seem to waste some time, but they give the constitution new strength to fulfill its duties and tasks. • Restless distraction enthralls the heart and leads it into error. • Restraint is natural, if one follows the law of cause and effect. 82 • Returning to the root is the state of stillness. • Right effort must be constant rather than unsettled and spasmodic. • Right thought is aimed at uprooting the defilements, by letting go of malice and enmity; hostility and resentment; cruelty-to-oneself and others; and by endeavoring to be free of all attachments. • Right view is best-considered as two-fold: conceptual right view and experiential right view. Conceptual right view is the intellectual grasp of the principled enunciated in the Buddha’s teaching. Experiential right view is the wisdom that arises by the direct, empirical penetration of the teaching. • Right view is seeing how wrong everything in the worldly world is seen due to desire for sensual pleasure, existence and non-existence. • Right view is the forerunner of the path that gives direction and efficacy to the to the other seven path factors. • Right view requires analysis and dissection of every thing that is wrongly seen in the conventional, worldly-realm, scrutinizing every sensual or mental action as it is in the process of becoming an object of attachment to existence and of the reason for the arising of such attachment. • Ripping through wood-grain, saw teeth rasp through passive beam, but dead wood does not scream. • Rules help to regulate the mind; when it regulates itself, it needs no rules. • Run after the defilements so they suffer a bit and run away and hide; don’t let them just swarm through the ears, eyes, nose, tongue, body and mind. • Rushing from one task to another, a man forgets where and why he is going. 83 • Sadly, the younger generation lacks reverence and respect. • Sages do not cling to the past or future, nor do they cling to the present. • Samadhi is simply that which herds the defilements together in quietness within the heart. • See the body hair, nails, teeth and skin as they really are. • See the world as though it were empty; see the moods as empty. • Seeing is real, but what is seen is not real. • Seeing the waiting net of Samsara, we stop and turn around. • Self is the protector of self. • Self is transitory; so is experience. • Self-analysis is the way to gain insight into the truth of no-self. • Self-indulgence in sense pleasure is low, vulgar, common, ignoble and ultimately unsatisfying. • Self-mastery is much more to be valued than gaining mastery and control over others. • Self-mastery is the supreme victory. • Self-reliance is the heart holding onto wholesome objects. • Sense arises as it should, according to nature. There is no awareness of pain or pleasure or neutral feeling. It is the heart that dupes the senses into assigning meanings and having feelings. • Sense of shame and fear of wrong-doing are positive states of mind that lay a foundation for clear conscience and moral integrity. • Sensory experience in the world leaves us very exposed and vulnerable; we are constantly bombarded with impulses of pleasure and pain. • Sensual desire is infatuation that brings no lasting satisfaction. 84 • Sensual pleasures can only bring happiness in the short term at best; and, sooner or later, suffering will follow. • Separation, disappearance, misfortune and ruin act in accordance with impermanence and dissipation in nature. • Sever the passions as one would sever arms and legs, never to be used again. • Severance of passions is like limbs severed never to be used again • Shame and fear of blame is the basis of respect for oneself and others. • Shame is motivated by self-respect and inward-looking, while moral dread is outward-looking and filled with fear of consequences. • She smiles and thinks herself content, habitually grasping at transient things such as ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ She doesn’t realize that whatever she reaches out to and falls in love with is forever out of reach, edging towards dissolution. • Shed passion and aversion as a jasmine would shed withered flowers. • Shine in peace from within and be a shining light to society. • Shouldering a rock is a big block, if we don’t know, when to let go. • Show equanimity when honor is bestowed upon you. • Siddhartha abandoned the jhanas of his two teachers because they had not led him to the source of suffering. • Silence speaks louder than words. • Silver slip of the moon, moving yet motionless, suspended in the sky. • Simply thinking a lot doesn’t make one wise. Being free of hostility makes one wise. • Since the way lies between now and the blink of an eye, why wait ‘til the day when you’re old and gray? 85 • Since your view is skewed, it should do no harm to try to change your attitude. • Sit alone and strip reality to the bare bone. • Sit and practice until you have forgotten the body you came in. • Sit down and breathe for an hour and come up a better person. • Sit in meditation, focusing on the light touch of the breath, on the upper edges of the nostrils or on lower edge of the upper lip. When concentration becomes firm, mindfulness will continue on its own beyond any awareness of the sense of the breath. • Sitting in a comfortable position tends to get your energy going in a beneficial way to keep you going. • Sitting in lotus position may be easier if one sits on a slightly raised, rather hard cushion, allowing the knees to touch the ground in the three–pointed position of knees and buttocks. • Slender, stalk, bending under morning dew, upon the yellow flower. • Small indeed is the share of happiness and joy of living beings. Whenever a little happiness and joy arises in living beings, rejoice that at least one ray of light has pierced through the darkness and dispelled the gray and gloomy obscurity. • So long as the mind is attached to anything at all, we will engage in volitional actions, make new kamma, and experience the results. • Society can be improved for the better by starting to work on ourselves from within. • Solids are mostly empty space evolving and moving in time and space. • Some of the bodily fluids evaporate into the air and some seep into the ground. 86 • Someone twirling a torch can create an impression of a circle of fire, but we know that there really is no ring of fire. It is just the impressions of individual positions of the fire at different places and at different times. Our mind takes the impressions to be something continuous; or rather, our mind connects the impressions and we deceive ourselves. • Sometimes, the most mundane event stimulates a ripe mind to see the truth perfectly. • Sound working knowledge of the basic Buddhist doctrines is needed to know how to navigate the raft to cross the stream of consciousness of the human condition. • Space has a name but no form. • Speak harshly of no one and no harshness will return to you. • Speak quietly and kindly, and be not forward in opinions or advice. • Standing, sitting, walking or lying down, may one abide in sublimity. • Start cleansing your mind before you start cleansing anything else. • States of thinking and planning replace non-states of non-thinking and non-planning. • Stop the cart and the wheels come to rest. • Strive on with mindfulness, and all difficulties and compoundedthings will eventually break-up and change, and the mind will come to rest. • Struggling hard to complete things, we never get anything done. • Such is the primal instinct of the basic man, he will almost always seek his own advantage any way he can. • Sudden awareness of the such-ness of things over-rides joy and sorrow. 87 • Suffering and torment arise out of the false notion that an object of desire belongs to ‘me’ and is ‘myself.’ • Suffering can be a condition caused by how we see ourselves in relation to the world; such view, however, can be diagnosed, adjusted and cured. • Suffering can no longer arise within the body when the body is nolonger imagined as ‘me’ or ‘mine.’ • Suffering is a stern but well-meaning friend which teaches us the lesson of looking at ourselves. • Suffering is incomprehensible retribution. • Suffering is the common bond that we all share. • Suffering is to be understood not only as experienced pain and sorrow, but more widely as the wretchedness of everything conditional. • Suffering out of desire is accompanied by a lack of satisfaction and completeness, like a greedy insatiable demon continually straining to satisfy an insatiable appetite, and so the cycle continues. • Sympathetic joy coexists with measureless misery. • Sympathetic joy is the divine smile on the face of the Enlightened One. • Systematic attention given to any subject will show up its impermanence. • Take care to reflect on, adjust and correct your behavior. • Take food just as a medicine to preserve the body. • Talking causes more harm than good. • Tall and short only arise through contrast with one another. • Teachers are those who only point out the direction of the path. 88 • Teaching you how to watch the breath is different from you learning how to watch it yourself • Ten thousand flowers in spring; snow in winter. • That which is guessed at is not beyond doubts. • The ‘me’ you used to see can no longer be. • The aberrant effects of earth-born suffering sink us so thoroughly, there’s no telling when or if we might eventually emerge. • The Abhidhamma provides protection, weapons of defense, against the overwhelming assault of innumerable internal and external impressions on the human mind. • The absorptions and the powers that arise with them are never an end in themselves. • The accumulated bones left behind in one’s continuing-life-cycles could become as high as a mountain. • The act of picking up and attaching to mental objects is akin to stabbing yourself each time. • The act of willing is always based upon the conditions that preceded it. • The aim is not to concentrate the mind on a specific object, but to point the mind towards liberation from all mental habits. • The assumption of substantiality which is deeply engraved in the words of our daily language, and modes of thinking, and modes of action, will still continue to govern our ancient egocentric impulses. • The bad mind just collects more and more badness. • The bad smells of the body are always existent. • The Bhikkhu dwells, perceiving again and again, the mind as just mind, cittas, as just the mind and not ‘mine’ or ‘I’ or not ‘self’ but just a phenomenon. 89 • The Blessed One set into motion the Wheel of the Dhamma by giving the first sermon. • The blessing of wealth allows sharing and caring. • The Bodhidharma sat nine years facing a wall just doing zazen and forgetting zazen itself. • The Bodhisatta married at sixteen, with forty-thousand attendant princesses, and lived in the enjoyment of kingly pleasures in great magnificence. • The bodily aggregate is covered with a mere membrane of skin that still manages to deceive the eye. It’s not even as thick as a palm leaf manuscript. • The bodily aggregate is there: we are this body day and night, putting it to bed, lulling it to sleep, discharging its wastes, standing it up and taking it on walks. The aggregate of feeling is also there, constantly manifesting itself, even right here at this very moment: if it isn’t pleasant, it is painful, if it isn’t happy it is sad, as the plenitude of feelings alternate and change, arrange and re-arrange. The crucially important thing to realize about all this is not to take on board any bodily pain or suffering, any emotion or attachment. • The body advances towards its own disintegration and returns to its original elements. • The body doesn’t know anything. Feeling doesn’t know anything. Perceiving doesn’t remember anything. Imagining arises and, then, vanishes. It all just comes and goes. • The body is a painted mirage in which nothing is lasting or stable. • The body is built of elements containing decay within them selves. • The body is constituted of the elements of earth, air, fire and water. • The body is filled with loathing which gets into our clothing. 90 • The body is kept alive by the breathing-in and breathing-out. • The body is like a jar. The mind without the body travels faster alone. • The body is made up of solidity, cohesion, temperature and movement: earth, air, fire and water. • The body will not always have the same strength to flee from danger and death. • The body, used as an instrument of pleasure, soon wears itself out. • The bottom of the pond is dark and rotten, but the lotus that rises above it is clean and clear. • The boundless reaches of space and nothingness are blocked and locked out of view by a stubborn sense-of- awareness of a finite sense of ‘me.’ • The breath is not satisfying because it does not last very long. • The Buddha advises that a man train himself in merit-making that yields long-lasting happiness. • The Buddha did not create the Dhamma; he just discovered it where no one else was looking. • The Buddha did not invent the Dhamma; he just re-discovered it. • The Buddha is looked upon as an inexhaustible source of guidance and spiritual inspiration, as the wise counselor to turn to for help in resolving the difficult moral and mental problems inescapable in this daily life. • The Buddha is not passive but tirelessly active, working, through the Dhamma, for the realization of well-being and happiness. • The Buddha lived in the world; he didn’t live anywhere else. • The Buddha said, ‘He who attends to the sick attends on me.’ 91 • The Buddha saw things never seen before, on levels never attained before, and reached great depths of insight never reached before, yet the Buddha still kept contact with the earthly, immediate needs of humanity. • The Buddha says, ‘There is suffering.’ The Buddha does not say, ‘I suffer.’ • The Buddha taught his followers to learn and transmit the Dhamma both in word and spirit. • The Buddha taught that merit-making is a formidable antidote to overcome the many vicissitudes faced in our daily lives. • The Buddha taught us to take care in our actions. Who takes care? The body doesn’t know anything. The hands do not know anything. The body and the hands are following orders. Find out where the orders are coming from and learn to regulate them. • The Buddha teaches how to face death without anxiety. • The Buddha used tangibles to explain intangibles and used similes and metaphors to explain the sublime to simple minds. • The Buddha would not declare something if it were impossible to practice. He wouldn’t teach such things because they would not be useful and beneficial. • The Buddha, in his teachings, constantly makes use of conceptions and ideas as comparisons, such as that of using a raft to cross a river or that of the raft being of no further use after the river has been crossed. • The Buddha, once, through the power of the will, suppressed a severe illness and regained health again. 92 • The Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha are the coming together of the three refuges. View them clearly, and, then, make your own refuge within yourself. • The Buddha, the Supreme Physician, prescribes the development the balanced harmony of five faculties: confidence, energy, mindfulness, concentration and understanding. • The Buddha’s teaching was aimed at those with only a little dust in their eyes. • The Buddhist tradition holds that moral power has healing properties that may work when orthodox medicine fails. • The burden of life is like a heavy rock that we cannot yet let go of and we cannot continue to carry. • The cause why ascetics dispute with ascetics is because of lust for views, because of adherence and bondage and obsession with cleaving to views. • The code of moral discipline encourages you to be careful of that inside you which is responsible for making you commit all sorts of transgressions. • The companion of pleasure is pain. • The compounded elements go according to their own nature. • The conventional view of happiness, instead of giving comfort and benefit, brings a blazing fire to sear the heart with suffering and torment. • The core of the teaching lies in exposing what causes and conditions are. • The corruptions of insight disguise themselves as true. • The crane’s legs have gotten shorter in the spring rain. 93 • The croaking of frogs meets the sound of chirping birds between the leaves. • The cure for afflictive passions and veils of ignorance is emptiness. • The decision of whether to follow the Dhamma or wander away rests only with you. • The deed is, but the doer of the deed is not found. • The defilements are more-clever than the ignorant. • The defilements continually scorch the heart as no other fire can, endlessly turning up the heat. • The defilements don’t have to fool and deceive anybody because the one within whom they arise is fooling and deceiving himself. • The defilements entice like the bait on a hook; as soon as the fish is bold enough to take one nibble and, then, another, it is sure to be caught. • The defilements have the power of a demon and lie hidden, deep within one’s personality. • The delight of the Dhamma exceeds all delights; the extinction of thirst overcomes all pain. • The depravity of the heart is propelled downwards by our own continuous thinking and imagining. • The desire for things can only bring turmoil to the mind, which becomes like a virulent infection that can not be stopped. • The developed meditator becomes proficient in the absorptions, so that he can enter and emerge from them when he likes, without being attached to them. • The development of purity and virtue are not ends in themselves, but the means of gaining detachment from lust. 94 • The Dhamma does not belong to anyone; it was there long before the Buddha discovered it. • The Dhamma is already there, but everyone has to discover it within himself. • The Dhamma is like the plans for building a house which is not properly completed until the blueprints have been followed and carried out to fulfillment in detail. • The Dhamma is pure by nature, but when it comes to stay in an ordinary common mortal, it becomes counterfeit and corrupted. • The Dhamma isn’t anywhere else. It is right here in our hearts and bodies for everyone to see. • The Dhamma isn’t something about long ago and far away; it’s fresh and vibrant right in the here and now today. • The Dhamma leads step-by-step to an ever-increasing, ever-purer sense of happiness. • The Dhamma may not be given like a piece of fruit. It must be nurtured from the root. • The Dhamma will never be what we expect it to be. • The dignity of kings and lords is comparable to a particle of dust floating in a sunbeam. • The diminishing of defilements leads out of suffering. • The disciples of Gothama are always well awake, and their thoughts, day and night, are set on the body. • The distance between hell and earth seems to be great, but in point of fact, the continuity from one to another is unbroken, with no interval or intervening space in between. 95 • The distracted mind slowly comes under the surveillance of the mindful- mind, until mindfulness forms a strong foundation for further development. • The doer of the deed should always consider where it may lead. • The ducks that haven’t been cooked quack in the spring rain. • The dust of affliction has no form. • The eightfold path, when properly practiced, leads directly to Nibbana, to peace, to the Buddha Dhamma. • The evil one grinds one down, like a diamond a precious stone. • The evil-doer suffers in the here and hereafter. • The external world does not enchain man; man enchains himself to the external world. • The eye goes looking for objects and grasps onto them without stopping to think that they are just images reflected by optic nerves. • The faults of others are easy to see; we see our own with more difficulty. • The fear we experience is no different than the fear that others experience. • The final aim of the teaching is to attain a freedom that is boundless, limitless and irreversible. • The firmly settled mind is able to see clearly; it can discern the truth and falseness within oneself. • The firmly settled mind might waver a little under the pull of the senses, but it will quickly correct itself so that the basis of mindfulness continues examining impermanence, suffering and notself. • The first exposition of The Four Noble Truths was the discourse that set the Wheel of the Dhamma in motion. 96 • The five senses are really only organic reactions in the mind. • The flow of the heart is constantly involved with mundane affairs. • The following riches cannot be taken away: faith and confidence in the practice, virtue in moral conduct, shame and fear of doing evil, effort in seeking, understanding, generosity and wisdom. • The food of the Dhamma is shared by those who offer food to the monks. • The fool bears the fruit of his own destruction. • The foolish sit in the chariot; the wise are not attached to it. • The fools of this world would prefer to look for sages far away. • The forest elephant, on being addressed with words that are gentle, listens, bends an ear, and bends his mind to learning. • The Four Noble Truths are a means to an end, and when the end is reached they lose their significance. • The fruit is already ripe in the Dhamma; the only thing lacking is to partake of the fruit. • The fruit of goodness is contentment. • The gift of the Dhamma is superior to all other gifts. • The gift of truth excels all other truths. • The glorious chariots of kings wear out. • The goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances. • The good intention that arises in one who shows respect or reverence is the basis for making merit. • The good intentions that arise in the giver of a gift follow a sequence of three stages: producing the gift prior to giving; the moment of giving the gift; and recollecting the moment of giving the gift. 97 • The good things other people want to do for you are potentially harmful to you. • The good things that you, yourself, want to do for others can be potentially harmful to you. • The goodness of virtue never wears out and never ages. • The greatest achievement is selflessness. • The greatest action is not conforming to the world’s ways. • The greatest effort is not concerned with results. • The greatest form of courage is to face the demon of the fiery, enflamed worldly heart within with unflinching determination. • The greatest generosity is non-attachment. • The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. • The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. • The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. • The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. • The greatest patience is humility. • The greatest precept is continual awareness. • The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. • The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances. • The greatest worth is self-mastery. • The grim reaper of death is taking you away with every breath. • The habitual way is to say, ‘I suffer,’ but the correct way of seeing is ‘There is suffering.’ • The happiness of others in itself is satisfaction; do not expect any other form of recompense. • The harder you think and think, the tighter you tighten the bond. • The harder you try, the further you get from the true meaning. 98 • The hardest thing to tame is yourself. • The heart can easily notice and be aware of arising conditions for they arise openly, boldly and shamelessly, with no attempt at mystery or concealment. • The heart can stand up to the truth and will prevail. • The heart gains nothing but harm in assigning meanings to senses and feelings. • The heart generally does not know peace but only trouble and unrest, hunger and thirst, worries and concerns over affairs that are of no use at all, and for the most part, these affairs are the heart’s own thoughts and imaginings, which poison and burn oneself out, without anyone else being involved. • The heart going in and seizing hold stimulates mental disease. • The heart is conceited; it thinks it is something other than it is. • The heart of concentration is penetrating to what is at the heart of mind and matter. • The heart of mindfulness will not be annihilated under the microscopic light of investigation. It will survive analysis and go beyond all offences into purity. • The heart untended is similar to a drought-ridden scrub jungle where the dried-out vegetation easily ignites. • The heart will not come to ruin through thorough scrutiny and rigorous investigation. • The heart, long crushed under the weight of attachment, will be freed and uplifted through mindfulness and wisdom. • The heart, once purified will be cleansed of offenses, and true to its nature, will go beyond the limitations of the senses. 99 • The heart, which becomes tattered and tangled, as it battles selfishly along its way, achieves attainment of selfless-calm and peace at last. • The hot, pounding, human heart deteriorates quickly; the cool, impassive, stone heart of the mountainside not quite so quickly, but both are following the same timeless process of deterioration in the nature of the Dhamma. • The hottest of the hottest fires can only be extinguished by the Dhamma. • The idea that you must do something to become enlightened comes from wrong understanding, because if you had to do something, then, enlightenment would be dependent upon something. • The ignorant heart has gathered its offences into itself, and it is conceited, thinking itself all-wise and all-knowing. It thinks it knows everything about this physical world of the sense impressions and aggregates, but it doesn’t yet know about itself. • The illusion of life can drop and burst, just like bubble of foam. • The impure pine away like old cranes in a lake without fish • The incense of the Dhamma drives away filth and ignorance. • The indifferent, common person just spins and whirls with desire, dizzy and imbalanced all the time. • The inevitability of change causes distress, irritation, anger, fear and loss. • The initial stage of supramundane penetration is followed by the final stage of supramundane penetration, in which he, transformed by direct perception into stream entry, reaches consummation, arriving at the teaching’s final goal, culminating in the end of suffering. • The instinct of self is manipulative and cunning and its villainy is not easy to see. 100 • The layman who thinks himself already an Arahat is blocking the path to his own progress. • The lion’s roar is the exclamation that a bundle of aggregates has become awakened. • The little share of happiness of beings usually follows many disappointments, failures and defeats. • The living Dhamma is all around, but only few can see it. • The living message of the Dhammapada rings down, through the centuries, and speaks to us in our present condition in the fullness of our humanity. • The log that floats free in the water will finally reach the sea. • The Lord Buddha formerly had defilements, yet it was possible for him to uproot them. • The Lord Buddha prescribes the shortest and most direct path. • The Lord Buddha taught us to seek seclusion and solitude in the deep forests appropriate for practice. There were no exhortations to go and live and practice at the crossroads or in the crowded market-place. • The madder we get about our circumstances, the more magnified they become. • The man who craves for riches ruins himself as he would ruin others. • The master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. • The means to deliverance lies in moral purification. • The measure of a man’s life is by the breath. • The meditator applies himself steadily to whatever task is at hand. 101 • The mental process of thinking is continually concocting from dawn to dusk. Sometimes the heart becomes so over-heated that it becomes exhausted. • The message of the Buddha is still living in the Buddha-Dhamma. • The mind can cure itself of the error of connecting to things. • The mind doesn’t exist or non-exist. • The mind experiences good and bad mental states, happiness and suffering, because it is deluded by mind objects. • The mind gains nourishment by catching what flies into its web. • The mind gains nourishment from awareness and understanding. • The mind has no form and its awareness no limit. • The mind in a state of distraction becomes its own obstruction. • The mind in its natural state has no preoccupations or issues prevailing upon it. It is like a flag with no wind. As long as it is alone and undisturbed, nothing will happen. It is like a leaf on a tree which can only move through external force. The mind on its own is inactive and still. • The mind in its natural state is neutral to loving and hating, free of any blame for itself and others; it is independent, existing in a state that is clear, radiant and untarnished, pure and peaceful and free of any feeling at all. • The mind in its natural state of stillness doesn’t go looking to get involved with external things. When the mind moves, it is because of something external. • The mind is enshrouded in darkness; we have to arouse and increase energy and maintain pressure and practice until we break through the clouds of defilement. 102 • The mind is like a wild elephant tusker that must be tamed and trained, before it can work well. • The mind is really a series of mental events which arise and pass away with incredible rapidity. • The mind is restless and hard to control, like a monkey that can never sit still. • The mind is very unruly and difficult to control; like attempting to contain a wild tusker that cannot be tied and bound. • The mind likes and dislikes; the heart is neutral and still. It doesn’t think anything at all. • The mind makes false assumptions and deludes itself. • The mind needs time to be still and calm in samadhi, and, after it has rested, it can then continue its investigation, using mindfulness and wisdom in line with its abilities. • The mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. • The mind on it own is actually free of attachments; free of attachments, it has to find its way back to itself. • The mind sent outside the mind is suffering. • The mind source stops creating issues, leaving the mind at rest. • The mind takes for granted that the body has come to stay forever. • The mind that is free of attachment is able to depend on itself, and find refuge within itself. • The mind without anger is the wholesome opposite of anger and is the cause of loving-kindness, friendship and good will. • The mind without delusion perceives the impermanent, unsatisfactory and soulless nature of conditioned-phenomena. 103 • The mind without greed is the wholesome opposite of greed and is the cause of renunciation, generosity, charity and giving. • The mind, like a mischievous monkey tends to wander away. Yet even a monkey can be trained. • The mind, like water, is clean and pure by its nature; if water is colored or unclear, it must be filtered to once more become pure. • The mind, the way it is inclined, does not want to accept the facts of nature the way they are. The mind wants to change nature to be the way the mind wishes nature to be, but the mind can’t win against nature. It’s a losing battle. • The mind’s capacity is limitless and its manifestations inexhaustible. • The minds’ old conditioning is based on ignorance, the inability to see things as they really are. • The mirror of wisdom is wondrously empty of itself. • The missions that we set for ourselves are personal ambitions of self as opposed to being the relinquishing of self. • The moment arises and passes away, just the same way as night and day. • The moment of the giving-up of grief is a pleasant moment. • The moment the cup of pleasure is emptied, it needs to be re-filled. • The moment you become adverse to something, you cannot smile and the mind goes bad. • The monk who is able to endure, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, the touch of mosquitoes, gadflies, wind, sun and creeping things, abusive language and unwelcome modes of speech; he has learned to bear bodily feelings, which, as they arise, are painful, sharp, severe, wretched, miserable and deadly. Purged of all the dross of impurities of attachment and aversion and confusion, he is worthy of the 104 oblations, offerings, respect and homage, an unsurpassed field of merit in the world. • The moon seems to be swimming in a hole between the teak-tree leaves. • The more one gives to others, the happier one is. • The more sublime and noble is the joy of others, the more sublime and noble will be another’s sympathetic joy. • The more the mind is trained and tamed, the less it suffers. • The more we contemplate and investigate grasping, the more insight arises. • The more you do of an unwholesome thing, the less you want to continue. • The more you get involved in suffering, the more you get distracted from seeing the actual cause of suffering. • The more you talk and think about it, the more you wander from the truth. • The most illuminating is a mind that is thoroughly cleansed of impurities and remaining pure retains no blemishes. • The motivations of the worldly heart are neither good nor evil. That’s just the way the world is. • The multitudinous changes which occur between life and death show the way of the Dhamma. • The natural mind is basically empty; all appearances are illusions. • The objects of the senses, are unsubstantial. They are just sensations that come and go. • The obstacle is the path. • The old emotional object passes away and the new one arises. 105 • The only place that can be truly peaceful is in your own mind. • The only safe place for your riches is in a heart of purity. • The opacity of delusion must eventually become transparent, cleared by wisdom. • The ordinary events of your daily lives are the actions of the battle field; be mindful of your actions, and be sure your motives are pure. • The ordinary worldly person, although being roasted alive, pretends as though he were immune to fire and pays it no attention. • The original mind is beyond good and evil. • The other side of the moon has no face to peer into empty space. • The Pali word for ‘suffering’ means ‘being incapable of satisfying.’ • The past is but a dream; the future is a mirage; the present is in the clouds. • The path is not up; it is not down. It is not beyond; it is not around. The path is within, and it is without bounds. • The path is, but no traveler on it is seen. • The path of pacification leads through moral restraint and concentration to wisdom. • The path of the wise one is difficult to understand, like that of a bird in the sky. • The patient should bear excruciating pain patiently. • The perception of void-ness is free of the perception of earth and free of the perception of death. • The person of integrity wafts a scent of virtue unsurpassed. • The person who is content with sensual love pays a heavy price for it. • The phenomenological perceptions of life defy any attempt at establishing a fixed-pattern. 106 • The phenomenology of the mind changes every neutral, mental image into a perception of another kind. • The poor are unhappy because they do not have enough; the rich are unhappy because they have too much. • The potential for all kinds of wrong behavior lies within each and every one of us as a part of nature. Human nature is a part of nature. • The practice of mindfulness only becomes an effective instrument of liberation to the extent that it is founded on and guided by right view. • The practice of moral restraint involves every part of the body. The Buddha taught us to be careful of all of our physical actions. • The practice of Right Mindfulness has been extolled as the crest jewel of the Buddha’s teaching. • The practice won’t work if you try to bring anyone else in to do it for you. The mind has to look after itself. • The principle of conditionality supports the scaffolding of the entire teaching. • The problem with an appearance of beauty is that we trust what we think we can see. • The problem with the eye is it tends to simplify complex-realities. • The purpose of the practice is to seek inwardly, searching and investigating, until one reaches original mind. Pure mind is aware of everything that is happening around it but without attachment. • The radiance of the Dhamma is always shining brightly. • The raft has to be left behind after the stream has been crossed. • The raw mind is maddened by noise and distractions. • The real, living Dhamma does not arise from anywhere. 107 • The relinquishment of the desires and unwholesome factors through concentration and discursive thought is accompanied by the arising of joyfulness and well-being. • The remedy for bad or wrong habits of action, speech and thoughts is to gradually replace them by good and correct habits, until the latter become as spontaneous as the former were before. • The renunciation of all wrong-doings, great and small, from bodily, mental and verbal actions: this is the teaching. • The sage and wise have always been careful to press on with their investigations no matter what to level of insight they have attained • The sage faces death with calm, composure and confidence. • The sage puts his own person last, yet it is found in the foremost place. • The savor of the flavor of the Dhamma grows gradually more and more delicious. • The scent of flowers does not normally travel against the wind. • The scent of the good goes against the wind. • The self does not exist as we conventional conceive it • The self, as we imagine we experience it, is actually impermanent sense in a constant state of dissolution continually dependent on conditional factors. • The serene and peaceful mind is the supreme achievement of mankind. • The shortest way is to conquer the capriciousness of the heart. • The snake had no legs so the turtle assumed it could not escape. • The space between heaven and hell is like a bellows. 108 • The span of a man’s life sometimes seems much like the impact of a speck being blown against the rock face of a massive mountain that has been arising up and eroding, out of the ever-emergent flux of the sea, for what appears to be eons and eons. • The spider merely sits in the middle and waits for you. • The state of mind that is centered excels the state that isn’t centered. • The surest way is to follow in the footsteps of one who knows the path. • The teacher is still present in the teaching. • The teaching on the Four Noble Truths arises out of compassion for the world. • The teachings of the Buddha heal the mental diseases of the mind. • The teachings were aimed at focusing on the purity and quality of the perceptions of the mind in the present. • The things we do to feel pleasure and avoid pain, keep going around in a cycle again and again. • The thirst of a thoughtless man grows like a creeper; hopping from life to life, like a monkey seeking fruit in the forest. • The thirsty person can not listen because he is dying to drink. • The three great intoxications, youth, health and life, will all leave you. • The tools of the Dhamma will steadily deliver the heart to perfect freedom. • The traces of water birds come and go, but they never forget their path. • The trail of birds through space cannot be traced. • The transition from this existence into the regions of hell is infinitely quicker than the blink of an eyelid. 109 • The true phenomenologist concentrates upon and closely observes the appearance and disappearance, the impermanent arising and desisting, of instantaneous phenomenological events. • The true teaching leaves no words and no letters to hang onto. • The true treasure lies in the end of craving. • The truth is there within the reach of everyone searching for it. How can Dhamma ever vanish with time? • The ultimate reality of existence is in every moment. • The ultimate truth is beyond words. • The uncontrolled, tormented-heart will always expose itself to more and more torment. Instead of ridding itself of suffering, it actually makes the situation worse. • The unfocused mind cannot keep still; it keeps shooting out darts and arrows of like and dislike. • The universe is never static, but always evolving or developing in a constant flux of changing forms. • The unknown, untamed heart accumulates suffering; while the tamed heart within the heart accumulates wisdom. • The untrained mind must learn to see the Dhamma in the actions of the heart and the body. • The violence, hatred, cruelty, and sustained enmity that the Buddha observed in his training rounds in India have persisted throughout the world, even into the present day. • The voidness of one single thing is the voidness of all. • The waning moon will just be a silver sliver soon. • The warrior fights the defilements to the extent befitting the Tagatha, who was of the warrior class himself. 110 • The water is clear and pure to the bottom and the fish swims calmly. • The waves of the sea of the mind surge and subside without attachment. • The way is wordless; words are delusions. • The wheel ever-turning, going nowhere. • The wheel of kamma doesn’t turn in a Buddha mind. • The Wheel of the Dhamma turns as generation after generation burns. • The wheels are round, yet the tracks behind are long. • The whole aim of the Buddhist teaching is to develop the reflective mind in order to let go of delusions. • The whole moon and entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the end of a blade of grass. • The wild elephant of the mind, long accustomed to roaming in the jungles of desire, does not readily take to taming or being tied to the post of practice. • The wild, untamed heart is dangerous. Keep your eye constantly on its motivations, and when unwholesome kamma is about to arise, block the way. • The will is impetuous and its willing is treacherous. • The will that drives consciousness, what forces it? • The wise are not hurt by evil, but the evil are hurt by themselves. • The wise calmly consider what is right and what is wrong. • The wise set themselves right before instructing others. • The wise should remain alert, nursing themselves in the three watches of the day. • The wise that hurt no one go to the unchangeable place.
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