Quotes

"When you go out and see the empty streets, the empty stadiums, the empty train platforms, don’t say to yourself, “It looks like the end of the world.” What you’re seeing is love in action. What you’re seeing, in that negative space, is how much we do care for each other, for our grandparents, our parents, our brothers and sisters, protecting people we will never meet. People will lose jobs over this. Some will lose their businesses. And some will lose their lives. All the more reason to take a moment, when you’re out on your walk, or on your way to the store, or...

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I started the new year at our 19th annual winter Dzogchen Center meditation retreat, which we've been holding for the last ten or more years on the snowy banks of the mighty Hudson at the Garrison Institute in New York, right across from Bear Mountain and West Point. I love going there every winter and watching the river flow by, while praying, meditating, chanting, and walking through the lovely woods.  My students and I spend the week dancing the life of awakefulness into being through practices including meditative mindfulness training, centering, presencing, Tibetan energy yoga, self-inquiry,...

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  Breathe, relax, center and smile. Let things come and go, and just let be.  Practice Presencing. It’s not about trying not to think but about letting things come and go. Learning to relax, just be, center, and naturally meditate is a well known spiritual secret that people ought to be able to learn and integrate into life. Like mental flossing, it keeps one open and free, calm and clear. I too was a teeenage thinkaholic, even till recently, but I’m much more spacious now. American Buddhas, awaken! Loosen your attachments.” Lama Surya Das, New Dharma Talks 2012

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"The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don’t know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind  among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?" --Lama Surya Das  

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Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to preserve the beauty and wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred and inequality that inevitably causes it-- in that part of the world which i touch? ...What can you do TODAY, this very moment?" -- The Dalai Lama, Sept. 11, 2001

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America is the symbol of the free world. If it gets demoralized, it’s the end of the free world. So be strong and decisive. HH the Dalai Lama, 2010

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Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist … -Prof. Stephen Hawking (controversially) in a new book, The Grand Design

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Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back— Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream...

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Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life. Tolstoy, from his story “The Emperor’s Three Questions as quoted by  the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh in his famous seminal classic book “The Miracle of Mindfulness” (1975)

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"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."         --Meister Eckhart

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