“One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the truth beyond words.”

We look directly into our suffering rather than try to become happy. The happiness that arises from this approach is reliable.

Meditation is a skilful letting go: gently but with resolution.

A new day is here. Yesterday is a memory. Tomorrow is unknown. Now is the knowing.

Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone should behave. But it is not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.

Suttas are not meant to be ‘sacred scriptures’ that tell us what to believe.

Instead of becoming the world’s expert on Buddhism, just let go, let go, let go.

We no longer expect the sensory world to satisfy us.

When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we’re experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

Whatever you think you are, that’s not what you are.

The empty mind – the pure mind – is not a blank, zero-land, where you’re not feeling or caring about anything.

The problem is grasping the clock. So what do I do? Let it go, lay it aside – put it down gently without any kind of aversion. Then I can pick it up again, see what time it is and lay it aside when necessary.

It’s an effulgence of the mind. It’s a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. It’s an ability to accept life as it is.

The goal lies away from the sensual world. It is not a rejection of the sensual world, but understanding it so well that we no longer seek it as an end in itself.

We no longer demand that sensory consciousness be anything other than an existing condition that we can use skillfully according to time and place.

The mind of an enlightened human being is flexible and adaptable.

The mind of the ignorant person is conditioned and fixed.

To stop looking through glass, and let our eyes dwell on it for a moment to contemplate its wonder.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.

You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.

Everybody needs time to reflect and contemplate, and the most inspirational and peaceful place to do so is in nature.

If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don’t have to run away.

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

Be Consciousness (Itself)- Contemplate Consciousness (Itself)- Transcend Everything in Consciousness (Itself).