Daily Dharma

By combining wisdom and method, we can free ourselves from all types of suffering; investigation followed by conviction allows us to first understand the functioning of reality and then to put that understanding into our meditation practice.

The practice of metta, loving-kindness, tenderizes the heart, soothes the body, and opens the mind. It is not a cop-out or denial by pretending to feel a certain way but rather a commitment to unconditional positive regard no matter the circumstances—a radical and heart-opening way to meet this moment of harshness.

There are many ways to express love in action, and they begin with mindfulness. They begin with awareness. They begin with our ability to touch our suffering and the suffering of others.

Everything is changing, everything is interdependent—and there is no one to whom any of it belongs.

Dharma is not something we are fated to, or stoic about, but the very set of practices that can lift us out of our conditioning, out of an assumed set of limits and away from what is often a pervasive resignation.

Wisdom doesn’t come when we’ve grasped the ladder’s highest rung but when, looking down on our illusions, we no longer need a ladder.

As we pay attention to the dance of sensation across the field of our awareness from moment to moment, fear and sadness sometimes present themselves to be known and healed—whether or not we have invited them.

We practice learning that we can show up differently than the way that our habitual patterning often suggests that we should.

You don’t simply force yourself to become calm and equanimous regardless of events. You first have to find an inner sense of joy that comes from virtue, concentration, and discernment.

The Buddha realized that old age, sickness, and death are not problems in themselves. It is the mind that makes them problems—by believing they shouldn’t happen, by insisting on figuring them out, resisting, controlling.