Stabilizing our mind any time of the day or night is like taking a mineral bath. It dissolves our stress and revitalizes us. As we anchor our mind to the breath, we feel grounded, strong, and clear. Our hassles slide away, because we're connecting with a deeper stream of energy.

When the wind stops blowing, the world feels peaceful.

True love is the natural energy of our settled mind.

- Sakyong Mipham

from Ruling Your World, p. 100-101

I lounge on the grass, that's all. So

simple. Then I lie back until I am

inside the cloud that is just above me

but very high, and shaped like a fish.

Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place

of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-

wanting. When the blue jay cries out his

riddle, in his carping voice, I return.

But I go back, the threshold is always

near. Over and back, over and back. Then

I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I

have been asleep. But I have not been

asleep. I have been, as I say, inside

the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating

on the water. Then I go back to town,

to my own house, my own life, which has

now become brighter and simpler, some-

where I have never been before.

- Mary Oliver

"Six Recognitions of the Lord", #3

from the collection Thirst

Wandering time is positive. Don't think of new things, don't think of achievement, don't think of anything of the kind. Just think, "Where do I feel good? What is giving me joy?"

Take what comes and be where you like. What counts is being where you feel you're in your place.

- Joseph Campbell

from Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 69

So I've started being vigilant about watching my thoughts all day, and monitoring them. I repeat this vow about 700 times a day: "I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore." Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

from Eat, Pray, Love p. 178

neti, neti, neti

- yogic sense-withdrawl technique

["I am not this thought; I am not that thought; I am not thought." Insofar as you do not identify yourself with the stream of thoughts, you begin to realize the real you, the atma. This process is so simple to describe, so difficult to do, so important to master. You will realize through this procedure, while watching your thoughts, that they are not really you. This technique should be practiced for five minutes a day for three to nine weeks. It would be helpful to practice it for the rest of your life. You will, however, find major benefits within weeks, if not days.

This technique breaks the illusion, "I am the body," and "I am that which my mind thinks (I am)."]

- Goswami Kriyananda

from The Spiritual Science of Kriya Yoga

Snow Geese

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

What a task

to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,

and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard

above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound

I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

a flock of snow geese, winging it

faster than the ones we usually see,

and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

so they were, in part at least, golden. I

held my breath

as we do

sometimes

to stop time

when something wonderful

has touched us

as with a match

which is lit, and bright,

but does not hurt

in the common way,

but delightfully,

as if delight

were the most serious thing

you ever felt.

The geese

flew on.

I have never

seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.

Maybe I won't.

It doesn't matter.

What matters

is that, when I saw them,

I saw them

as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

- Mary Oliver

from the collection Why I Wake Early, p. 34-35

Closing their eyes, steadying their breathing, and

focusing their attention on the center of spiritual

consciousness, the wise master their senses,

mind, and intellect through meditation. Self-

realization is their only goal. Freed from selfish

desire, fear, and anger, they live in freedom always.

- the Bhagavad Gita

from chapter 5, Eknath Easwaran's translation

That point of rest has got to be in all of it. Even though you are active out there in the world, within you there's a point of complete composure and rest.

When the world

seems to be falling apart,

the rule is to hang onto your own bliss.

It's that life that survives.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 82

Or, the light within which is free from all suffering and sorrow

- Yoga Sutra I.36

We become sensitive to the subtle energies of the environment, and they become sensitive to us, because our senses are open to all realms.

Now we are able to judge conditions and time decisions properly in order to give new endeavors the greatest possible advantage for success. Because we are in tune with it, the environment becomes reflective in our decision making, shutting the door in our face or providing what we need to go forward.

- Sakyong Mipham

Ruling Your World, p. 158

It takes courage

to do what you want.

Other people

have a lot of plans for you.

Nobody wants you to do

what you want to do.

They want you to go on their trip,

but you can do what you want.

I did. I went into the woods

and read for five years.

The privilege of a lifetime is being

who you are.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 62

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

- Matthieu Ricard

Happiness, p. 19

The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects rest purely, without utterance. "Launch into the deep," says Jacques Ellul, "and you shall see."

- Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 35

The Nothing You Are Grasping

Do you still not know how little endures?

Fling the nothing you are grasping

out into the spaces we breathe.

Maybe the birds

will feel in their flight

how the air has expanded.

- Rilke

from the First Duino Elegy

A Year With Rilke, p. 255

translated by Macy and Barrows

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

excerpt from "The Summer Day"

from the collection House of Light

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

- William Stafford

from The Darkness Around us is Deep, p. 126

In profound meditation, we drop below all and become concentrated on one thing and one thing alone: our true identity. In this absorption, this great gathering within, we break through the surface of consciousness and plummet deep, deep into our real nature.

What we discover cannot be put into words, but thereafter we are never again the same. With all our consciousness gathered to an intense focus within, the boundaries that seem to separate us from the rest of the world disappear. We are opened to a transcendental mode of knowing.

In this profound state all petty personal longings, all hungering and thirsting, all sense of incompleteness vanish. We discover, almost in every cell of our being, that deep within us we lack nothing. Our inner reserves of love and wisdom are infinite; we can draw on them endlessly and never diminish them.

- Eknath Easwaran

from Meditation

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. I did not want to live a life that was not mine; living is so dear.

- Henry David Thoreau

When we practice meditation, we stabilize the mind and try to reduce confusion. When the mind is agitated, it is more susceptible to self-absorbtion.

- Sakyong Mipham

Ruling Your World, p. 56

What you have to do,

you do with play.

Life is without meaning.

You bring the meaning to it.

The meaning of life is

whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p.16

On this path

effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure.

Even a little effort towards spiritual awareness

will protect you from the greatest fear.

- Bhagavad Gita

Chapter III, lines 40-44

Eknath Easwaran translation

Ultimately, we are merely observing the very act of creation.

The whole universe is expanding at ever increasing speeds out from itself. It's becoming something creative and new in each moment. Nothing is remaining the same; everything is in creative transition towards a new expression of itself.

In our tired and somewhat burdened lives we don't perceive the activity of life as a sense of creation itself.

We too in our lives are part of that universe. You are that universe. In fact, you are the center of the universe because the universe only has center. All things are the center.

There's no edge to the universe. It's creating the very space it's evolving into. We are moving into something that is inexplicably wondrous.

There is a need to honor past influences within us. The Buddha invites us into the body and whatever the body contains we have to work with. What the body contains is the scar tissue of what we have known or the abuse we have given it or the emotions that are locked. And as we enter the body the past begins to express itself.

What each of us takes ourselves to be is a residue of the past and a film that blocks the effervescent light of this creative force.

How can we bring this into the creative movement of the universe itself?

- Rodney Smith

Seattle Insight Meditation lecture, 9/13/2011

"Sleeping in the Forest"

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

- Mary Oliver

from Twelve Moons

What you have to do,

you do with play.

Life is without meaning.

You bring the meaning to it.

The meaning of life is

whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

- Joseph Campbell

from Reflections on the Art of Living, p.16

Knowing others is intelligence;

knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,

you are truly rich.

If you stay in the center

and embrace death with your whole heart,

you will endure forever.

-tao te ching, #33

Stephen Mitchell's translation

If you want to shrink something,

you must first allow it to expand.

If you want to get rid of something,

you must first allow it to flourish.

If you want to take something,

you must first allow it to be given.

This is called the subtle perception

of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.

The slow overcomes the fast.

Let your workings remain a mystery.

Just show people the results.

-tao te ching, #36

Stephen Mitchell's translation

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on an kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 18

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

- Henry David Thoreau

It may be that when we no longer

know what to do we have come to our

real work.

And when we no longer know which way

to go we have come to our real

journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not

employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

-Wendell Berry

Internal busyness comes from the feeling of not having enough time. When you act with inner focus, it shifts you out of your time bind by anchoring you in the place where time is always enough.

As you make your effort, as you go about your daily tasks, the yoga lies in your intention to keep turning to the one who is not busy and to feel her steadiness, her detachment, and her freedom. You won't always see her immediately, but once you're committed to looking through activity to stillness, the one who is not busy starts to find you.

- Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal Nov. 2009

We will remember that underneath it all, we are already happy. Recognizing, acknowledging, and releasing thoughts by bringing our mind back to the object of meditation helps remind us that the frantic agitation of blame is unnatural and temporary. The wisdom and love beneath the clutter of negativity are natural and permanent.

- from Ruling Your World, by Sakyong Mipham p. 97

'Contentment' means whatsoever the situation is, you accept it without any complaint. In fact, you not only accept it without complaint, you rejoice in it with deep gratefulness. This moment is perfect.

Contentment is the discipline of yoga.... if nothing can create discontent in you, if nothing can create restlessness in you-- if nothing can push you off your center-- there arises supreme happiness.

- from The Essence of Yoga, by Osho

A man is walking in a field

and everywhere at his feet

in the short grass of April

the small purple violets

are in bloom. As the man walks

the ground drops away,

the sunlight of day becomes

a sort of darkness in which

the lights of the flowers rise

up around him like

fireflies or stars in a sort

of sky through which he walks.

- IV by Wendell Berry

from Leavings

And over one more set of hills,

along the sea,

the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.

If I had another life

I would want to spend it all on some

unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree

full of waving branches.

I wouldn't mind being a rose

in a field of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.

Reason they have not yet thought of.

Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.

Or any other foolish question.

from Roses, Late Summer, by Mary Oliver

from the collection House of Light

I lounge on the grass, that's all. So

simple. Then I lie back until I am

inside the cloud that is just above me

but very high, and shaped like a fish.

Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place

of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-

wanting. When the blue jay cries out his

riddle, in his carping voice, I return.

But I go back, the threshold is always

near. Over and back, over and back. Then

I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I

have been asleep. But I have not been

asleep. I have been, as I say, inside

the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating

on the water. Then I go back to town,

to my own house, my own life, which has

now become brighter and simpler, some-

where I have never been before.

from Six Recognitions of the Lord, by Mary Oliver

from the compilation Thirst

I have just three things to teach:

simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in action and in thoughts,

you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate towards yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.

from #67 of the Tao Te Ching

translated by Stephen Mitchell

Once we see how our mind works, we see how our life works, too. That changes us.

-from Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham p. 5

If you organize your life around the things you are passionate about, nothing is a time burden. You end up spending time with people you want to spend time with and doing what you love.

-Jeffrey Bores, Minneapolis, Minnesota

from Yoga Journal, October 2011

Connecting to a larger view, we begin to conquer small-mindedness. No longer is our mind so cluttered by negativity. We keep meditating, contemplating, and trying to apply virtue in our daily life because doing so seems to make a difference. Our life is making more sense. At first perhaps it felt like drudgery to stick with our training, but now we do it because we enjoy it.

We see how not harming ourselves and others frees us from confusion.

- from Ruling Your World, by Sakyong Mipham p.89-90

When meditation is mastered, the mind is

unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless

place. In the still mind, in the depths of meditation,

the Self reveals itself.

The practice of meditation frees one from

all affliction. This is the path of yoga. Follow it

with determination and sustained enthusiasm.

Little by little, through patience and repeated

effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.

Wherever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse

in its search for meaning without, lead it within;

train it to rest in the Self.

- the Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran, excerpts from Chapter 6

In contemplation, we practice pointing ourselves in a particular direction and staying there for awhile. When we hold our mind to something, it has no alternative but to get more familiar with that place.

- from Ruling Your World, by Sakyong Miphamy p.109-110

Can I stay still? How still? It is astonishing how many people cannot, or will not, hold still.

If I freeze, locking my muscles, I will tire and break. Instead of going rigid, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find a balance and repose. I retreat- not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone.

- From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard p.203

We can begin anything we do- start our day, eat a meal, or walk into a meeting- with the intention to be open, flexible, and kind. Then we can proceed with an inquisitive attitude. As my teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, "Live your life as an experiment."

At the end of the activity, whether we feel we have succeeded or failed in our intention, we seal the act by thinking of others, of those who are succeeding and failing all over the world. We wish that anything we learned in our experiment could also benefit them.

- from The Places That Scare You, by Pema Chodron p.1-2

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you

As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart...

Speak or act with a pure mind

And happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable.

-The Buddha

From Lovingkindness, by Sharon Salzberg p.70

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character.

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings.

-The Buddha

Taken from Lovingkindness, by Sharon Salzberg p. 83