Tricycle Daily Dharma May 31, 2013

What is Happiness? Whatever realization may come by way of silence, our happiness is never won that way. Happiness is not happiness unless it is shared. For happiness is the one thing in all the world that comes to us only at the moment we give it, and is likewise increased by being given away. - Clark Strand, “The Wisdom of Frogs”

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 30, 2013

A Sense of Closeness It is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are dear. With that combination‚ you can develop compassion. - Jeffrey Hopkins, "Everyone as a Friend"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 29, 2013

Fostering a Meditative Life Don’t be a slave to style. Don’t take more from the world than you’re willing to give back. And learn to undo the perceptions—so heavily promoted by the media—that shopping is a form of therapy and that a purchase is nothing but a victory or a gain. - Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "Skillful Shelter"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 28, 2013

Supreme Optimism Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living. - Taitetsu Unno, "Number One Fool"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 27, 2013

In the World Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it. - Gary Snyder, "Just One Breath"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 26, 2013

Gradual Practice Through such gradual practices, lamas of the past gave birth to realization in their mental continuum and discovered primordial wisdom. All the qualities that the great masters found, we can attain as well. It all depends on our own efforts, our diligence, our deeper knowing, and our correct motivation. - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, "Calm Abiding"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 25, 2013

True Understanding The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. - Bodhidharma, "Teachings from the Wake Up Sermon"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 24, 2013

Harnessing Difficult Situations Your practice should be strengthened by the difficult situations you encounter, just as a bonfire in a strong wind is not blown out, but blazes even brighter. - Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Teachings on the Nature of Mind and Practice"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 23, 2013

Get the Beauty You can spend a lot of energy being upset, or you can get with the program—it’s that right effort thing—get the beauty of the way it is. - Jeff Bridges, "The Natural"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 22, 2013

The Greatest Foolishness There’s no greater foolishness than to spend one’s lifetime acknowledging that one is deluded and yet doing nothing whatsoever about it. - Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, "Renunciation"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 21, 2013

Holding Anger It is not easy to refrain from repressing or indulging our anger. Our challenge is to embrace it with mindfulness and genuine caring. - Shuzen Harris, "Holding Anger"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 20, 2013

Accepting Uncertainty There is no need for science to be fundamentalist any more than there is a need for religions to be fundamentalist. Fundamentalism springs from a desire for certainty, but many religious people and many scientists know that this cannot be achieved by beings with limited minds and experience such as ourselves. - Rupert Sheldrake, "A Question of Faith"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 19, 2013

The Self-Destructiveness of Anger When you give in to aversion and anger, it’s as though, having decided to kill someone by throwing him into a river, you wrap your arms around his neck, jump into the water with him, and you both drown. In destroying your enemy, you destroy yourself as well. - Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, "Putting Down the Arrow"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 18, 2013

A Glimpse at Liberation Nirvana manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as clarity, as unshakable freedom. This isn’t watering down nirvana. This is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life. - Jack Kornfield, "The Wise Heart"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 17, 2013

How to Deal with Excessive Thinking The best way to deal with excessive thinking is to just listen to it, to listen to the mind. Listening is much more effective than trying to stop thought or cut it off. - Ajahn Amaro, "Thought Like Dreams"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 16, 2013

Things As They Are The process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an easy thing to do.   - Adyashanti, "Bliss is a By-Product"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 15, 2013

The Remedy Itself Is Free Right Where It Is We are not called upon as Buddhists to deny the world, and certainly not to escape from it. We are called to live with it, and to make our peace with all that is. The world of worries we wish to escape from in the beginning of Buddhist practice is found to be enlightenment itself in the end.   - Clark Strand, "Worry Beads"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 14, 2013

A More Complete Attention On trains, in the street, in our homes and communities, we practice paying attention—through developing mindfulness and lovingkindness and through letting go of projections—partly because a more complete attention proffers many special gifts. These gifts can penetrate through the exigencies of social roles, the seeming hollowness of chance encounters, and even through terrible hurt.   - Sharon Salzberg, "A More Complete Attention"

Tricycle Daily Dharma ~ May 13, 2013

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 13, 2013

Find the Feeling Buddhanature and the natural state are not just made up of happy, sweet emotions; buddhanature includes everything. It’s the calm, and the disturbed, and the roiled up, and the still; it’s the bitter and the sweet, the comfortable and the uncomfortable. Buddhanature includes opening to all of these things, and it’s found in the midst of all of them.   - Pema Chödrön, "Meditating with Emotions"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 11, 2013

The Primacy of Intention Metta practice is the cultivation of our capacity for lovingkindness. It does not involve either positive thinking or the imposition of an artificial positive attitude. There is no need to feel loving or kind during metta practice. Rather, we meditate on our good intentions, however weak or strong they may be, and water the seeds of these intentions.   - Gil Fronsdal, "May We All Be Happy"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 10, 2013

Inhabiting the Body As we inhabit our body with increasing sensitivity, we learn its unspoken language and patterns, which gives us tremendous freedom to make choices. The practice of cutting thoughts and dispersing negative repetitive patterns can be simplified by attending to the patterns in the body first, before they begin to be spun around in the mind.   - Jill Satterfield, "Meditation in Motion"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 9, 2013

Maintaining a Steady Practice Now if the practice is so good for us, why is it so difficult to maintain a steady practice? It may be that the notion that practice is 'good for us' is the very impediment—we all know how we can resist what is good for us at the table, at the gym, and on the Internet. This mechanical notion of practice, 'if I practice, then I will be (fill in the blank),' leads to discouragement because it is not true that practice inevitably leads to happiness or anything that we can imagine.   - Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, "Like a Dragon in Water"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 8, 2013

The Other Side of Boredom When you are really bored, the best thing you can do is sit down and let yourself experience the boredom more fully. It may not be a deep or satisfying state, but at least you are not indulging in the things with which you usually cover up this kind of experience. Your real state of mind is more nakedly exposed, because for the time being there are no distractions. If you can stay with the experience of boredom, you can try to feel your way through into something deeper, truer, and more spontaneous within yourself.   - Sangharakshita, "Staying with Boredom"

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 7, 2013

It Gets Easier Once we taste the freedom that comes with independence, it gets easier. We realize how much we have lost by desperately holding on, and we know how much there is to gain through disengaging from confusion. We can do this while expanding our most precious qualities: our good heart and our compassion for others.   - Dzigar Kongtrul, “Old Relationships, New Possibilities”

Tricycle Daily Dharma May 6, 2013

Facing Yourself Spiritual change is precisely a process that is bigger than you. You don’t control it. You surrender to it. You don’t reinvent yourself through spiritual work. You face yourself, and then you must let go of all the ghastly things you find. But there is no end to these ghastly things. They keep coming. The ego is a bottomless pit of suckiness. And so you finally let go of the self that clings to itself (one definition of ego). True freedom comes when ego goes.   - Shozan Jack Haubner, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenment"