Dharma Blog

You can’t see anything real in the daylight. The only thing you see in the daylight is what you want to see. When you turn the lights off in the night, you see what wants to be seen, which is a whole different story.

Having lost any sense of what a truly fulfilling life might look like, we search here and there for temporary fixes and satisfactions. Acquisition substitutes for the nourishment of the soul. Spectator sports stand in for the challenge and excitement of a life lived on the edge. We go on vacation to try to find experiences of freshness and surprise that we have lost in our ordinary existence.

Everything that ever happens to us is part of our journey toward realization. There is finally nothing that leads us away, no possibility of true regression, no actual mistake; everything is learning, opening, and moving forward, even when the opposite seems to be the case.

The spiritual journey cannot in any way be preconceived or predetermined; it is not humanly constructed or fabricated. The journey to ourselves is truly a journey into the unknown, a setting forth onto a sea that has never before been sailed and never before been fathomed or mapped.

All emotions spring from one basic source, distraction.

Better offer yourself to everything. Surrender. Dance with life, no matter what tune is being played. Why be a wallflower? Dance with life; you’ll love it.

It’s about equanimity and balance, a bigger perspective, about learning to appreciate all things and experiences — good and bad, pleasurable and painful, light and dark — in their own way.

When one is spacious, then there is space for things to happen appropriately, impeccably even.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

We can tune into things as they are. Receive what is happening and surrender to that, give ourselves up to the process. We don’t have to tell it, to push it, to fabricate it. It is all happening without our interference.

This is a Buddhist center and it’s good to come here.” Or, “We get merits.” Or, “I’m a Buddhist. I’m part of the sangha.” Those are all good stories, and they are true to a certain extent, but how conscious are we that we need to tell those stories? Rather than just be here totally. And be there totally when we walk down the street.

Everything that happens is perfect, even if it seems unwanted; it is all lawful karmic unfolding.

We’ve already made so many mistakes and fucked up so many times, why are we afraid of making a couple more?

As long as you stay in the corner, you’re safe. But what kind of way of life is that?

We are all just living here on this spaceship Earth, pursuing happiness in our various ways, living for a few decades and then passing on.