Enlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.
ADYASHANTIEnlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.
ADYASHANTITruth is not over there, wherever over there is. Truth is neither housed in religious rituals nor secret doctrines, nor in a guru’s touch or beatific smile, nor in exotic locations or ancient temples.
ADYASHANTIQuestion your thoughts. Question your stories. Question your assumptions. Question your opinions. Question your conclusions. Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness and joy. The keys to freedom are in your hands. Use them.
ADYASHANTIWhenever you aren’t manipulating your experience, you’re meditating. As soon as you meditate because you think you should, you’re controlling your experience again, and you’ve squeezed all the value out of your meditation.
ADYASHANTIOur illusions-the beliefs we hold on to-are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either.
ADYASHANTIMisery needs your conspiracy; it needs your help. Without your resistance misery cannot survive.
ADYASHANTIIt is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others.
ADYASHANTIOnly when the pursuit ceases, is it possible to recognize what comprises you: pure being, pure consciousness. This is actually the very substance of your own self and being.
ADYASHANTIThere is, quite literally, nothing to understand.
ADYASHANTIThe Buddha’s insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment.
ADYASHANTILife becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.
ADYASHANTIThe most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop struggling, striving, seeking, and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you don’t know who you are; you lose your boundaries.
ADYASHANTIThe process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an easy thing to do.
ADYASHANTIIf we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn’t that what silence is? It’s a listening, a deep wordless listening.
ADYASHANTIEgo is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is.
ADYASHANTIThe unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief.
ADYASHANTI