“Let your heart go out in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.”

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.

The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.

What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.

{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don’t question or doubt whether I am in the “correct” state or not.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth

Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

We do not spontaneously learn that we don’t learn that we don’t learn.

But yeah I’m very much a spontaneous guy and it’s sort of hard for me to multi-task and to have all these things going on at once.

The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue’s game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying

All things in God are spontaneous.

Love is nothing if it is not spontaneous. It cannot be a conclusion of reasoning.

What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.

Any damn fool can be spontaneous.