“We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.”

The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.

All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle.

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping.

At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment.

When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us.

What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them?

How we live now can cost us our entire future.

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.

The act of meditation is being spacious.

Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.

Why exactly are we so frightened of death that we avoid looking at it altogether? Somewhere, deep down, we know we cannot avoid facing death forever.

Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper: You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do.

In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful.

We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.

And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality.

Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.

Join karma and nature and the effect you have on your world. Join your philosophy. Join something bigger than you. Join what you believe.

She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind.” -Hera, goddess of marriage

we’re finding that all these things can lead to people believing the world works in a certain way. I

After believing in promises made and never fulfilled by Labour

I take what I see work. I’m a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing,