“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
Pema Chödrön
“If you want to deny or avoid something and have a picnic or vacation instead, you may feel some short-term relief, but the problem will remain. So instead of doing that, if you penetrate into the suffering or the tragedy and see its nature with some perspective, your mental attitude will improve, and you will have a real chance of resolving the problem.”
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering. This is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad.”
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
“We need to seriously investigate whether people who have fame, power, and wealth are happy and whether those who have nothing are always unhappy. When we look into this, we see that happiness is not based on objects but on one’s mental state.”
Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche
“As we open to what is actually happening in any given moment, whatever it is or might be, rather than running away from it, we become increasingly aware of our lives as one small part of a vast fabric made of an evanescent, fleeting, shimmering pattern of turnings. Letting go of the futile battle to control, we can find ourselves rewoven into the pattern of wholeness, into the immensity of life, always happening, always here, whether we’re aware of it or not.”
Sharon Salzberg
“Realizing that the confusion and chaos in your mind have no origin, no cessation, and nowhere to dwell is the best protection. ‘How am I going to earn my living after this?’ or ‘What is the best way to sharpen my personality so that I will be visible in the world?’ or ‘How I hate my problems!’ All of those schemes and thoughts and ideas are empty! If you look behind their backs, it is like looking at a mask. You realize that you are just authoring absurd, nonexistent things. That is the best protection for cutting confusion.”
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
“None of the antidotes to stress—numbing ourselves, running away, the various therapies—will ever really get to the root of it. We actually hold on to our stress. It is a way of holding on to our positions, our beliefs, our sense of being right—our self. In that tightness and rigidity, the body cannot deal with it and the mind cannot deal with it. We suffer because we will not let go.”
John Daido Loori, Roshi
“Like an old man watching children at play, we need to see through our own seriousness. No matter how seriously the children go about their games, the old man is amused and never for a moment takes them to be real. We can watch our own thoughts and emotions in the same way. Without taking them so seriously, we can see them as children at play and give them lots of space.”
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
“Fearlessness is a simple gesture of accepting whatever there is. This is what’s happening in this moment. It can’t be other than this. This is what it is, and that truth is always soothing.”
Sylvia Boorstein
Sources: When Things Fall Apart; Worlds in Harmony; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind; The Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen; Faith; Training the Mind; Mountain Record of Zen Talks; It’s Up to You; Fear and Fearlessness: What the Buddhists Teach.
