“Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t love. If you don’t understand your son, you can’t love him. If you don’t understand your mother, you can’t love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we love, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“The most precious inheritance parents can leave their children is their own happiness. Parents’ happiness is the most valuable gift they can give their children. Your children can use those lessons the whole of their lives. You may not be able to leave them money, houses, and land, but you can help them be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Everybody makes mistakes, but you can’t keep asking people to forgive you again and again.
True repentance makes you happy and makes the other person happy. Without it, trust will disappear and both of you will be less happy.
The other person will know by the way you act that you’re truly beginning anew. Even if the other person doesn’t see it right away, don’t quarrel or be afraid. Just practice well and steadily, and slowly the truth will be revealed and the relationship will improve.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“If a couple doesn’t practice mindfulness and does not try to understand their own and each other’s suffering, they won’t go far. They may continue to live together for a long time even when they’re not happy. They may stay together for the sake of the children, or because they don’t want to complicate their lives. There are many couples like that—they’re together but they’re not happy. There are other couples who can’t support being in such a situation and so they separate or divorce.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Whenever you find yourself judging your partner, go back to your in-breath and out-breath, and ask, How can I see this differently? Can I look more deeply to better understand her suffering and her difficulties?”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Whenever a painful feeling or emotion arises, we should be able to be present with it, not fight it, but recognize it”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“There are three key practices that can transform your suffering and allow you to truly make a home for yourself so that you have solidity and understanding to give your partner. They also lead you to great joy. They are the practices of mindfulness (smrti), concentration (samadhi), and insight (prajña). With mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can purify our mind so that the afflictions will be lighter, we can connect more deeply with our loved ones, and we can be free.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Even if two people have a baby together, they are still separate. Each of us remains in isolation. It’s not by living together, or by having sexual relations, or even by having children together that we can dispel this feeling of isolation. We can only dispel our mutual isolation when we practice mindfulness and are able to truly come home to ourselves and each other.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“When something is pleasant, lovely, and appealing, we’re caught by it. But appealing appearances are deceptive. We get hooked by them and once we’re caught, we suffer.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Sexuality should be accompanied by understanding and love. Without understanding and love, sex is empty.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Every human being wants to love and be loved. This is very natural. But often love, desire, need, and fear get wrapped up all together”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Any peace talks should begin with making peace with ourselves. First we need to recognize our anger, embrace it, and make peace with it. You don’t fight your anger, because your anger is you. Your anger is the wounded child in you. Why should you fight your anger? The method is entirely nonviolent: awareness, mindfulness, and tenderly holding your anger within you. Like this, your anger will transform naturally.”
Source: How to Fight
“When we feel anger, irritation, or indignation arising in us, we pause. We stop and come back to our breathing straight away. We do not say or do anything when we are inhabited by this kind of energy, so we don’t escalate the conflict. We wait until we’re calm again. Being able to pause is the greatest gift. It gives us the opportunity to bring more love and compassion into the world rather than more anger and suffering.”
Source: How to Fight
“Sometimes even if we think we want to be heard, we're not always ready for it.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
“Compassion is mindfulness. If you can maintain that awareness, you are protected. Your seeds of irritation and anger will not be watered and you can listen for one hour without being affected by what she says. You don't want to correct her, even if her speech is full of wrong perceptions and accusations—you feel only compassion, "Oh dear, she is the victim of so many wrong perceptions." You don't want to punish or criticize her because you have compassion.”
Source: Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other
“Do you have enough understanding and compassion to truly see the situation?”
Source: Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other
“Beloved one
You are not something that has been created.
You did not come into the realm of being from non-being.
You are a wonderful manifestation like a pink cloud on the top of a mountain or a mysterious moonlit night.
You are a flowing stream.
The continuation of so many wonders you are not a separate self.
You are yourself but you are also me
You cannot take the pink cloud out of my fragrant tea this morning
And I cannot drink my tea without drinking my cloud
I am in you and you are in me
If we take me out of you then you would not be able to manifest as you are manifesting now
If we take you out of me I would not be able to manifest as I am manifesting now
We cannot manifest without one another
We have to wait for each other in order to manifest together.”
“The practice of inclusiveness is based on the practice of understanding, compassion, and love. … Increasing our understanding and compassion makes our heart grow greater.”
Source: How to Fight
“We can only understand another person when we’re able to truly listen to them. When we can listen to others with deep compassion, we can understand their pain and difficulties. But when we’re angry, we can’t listen to others or hear their suffering. Listening deeply to another is a form of meditation.”
Source: How to Fight
“When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person stop suffering, that is a sign of real love.”
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“When your mind is liberated your heart floods with compassion: compassion for yourself, for having undergone countless sufferings because because you were not yet able to relieve yourself of false views, hatred, ignorance, and anger; and compassion for others because they do not yet see and are still imprisoned by false views, hatred, and ignorance and continue to create suffering for themselves and others.”
Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
“We have to find ways to nourish and express our compassion. When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.”
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand. If we want to understand a person, we have to feel his feelings, suffer his sufferings, and enjoy his joy. The word "comprehend" is made up of the Latin roots cum, which means "with," and prehendere, which means "to grasp it or pick it up." There is no other way to understand something.”
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“If you have experienced hunger, you know that having food is a miracle. If you have suffered from the cold, you know the preciousness of warmth. When you have suffered, you know how to appreciate the elements of paradise that are present. If you dwell only in your suffering, you will miss paradise. Don't ignore your suffering, but don't forget to enjoy the wonders of life, for your sake and for the benefit of many beings.”
Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
“The most effective way to show compassion to another is to listen, rather than talk.”
Source: No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering
“First, we just acknowledge that it is there inside us. If we don’t listen to our own suffering, we won’t understand it, and we won’t have compassion for ourselves. Compassion is the element that helps heal us. Only when we have compassion for ourselves, can we truly listen to another person.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Shallow understanding accompanies shallow compassion. Great understanding goes with great compassion.”
Source: The Sun My Heart
“We don't judge ourselves; we accept. I have these qualities and these weaknesses, but I will try to improve slowly, at my speed. If you can look at yourself like that, you can look at others like that too, without judgment.”
Source: The Art of Communicating
“People don't dare let go of the mind, they grasp onto the mind. They can let go of the objects of the mind, but they don't dare to let go of the mind. Why? We're afraid of falling into a place where we think there will be nothing to feel, to touch, to pick up, afraid we'll have nothing left. But emptiness doesn't mean nothingness.”
Source: Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
“Much of our thinking is unnecessary.”
Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
“The mind tends to dart from one thing to another, like a monkey swinging from branch to branch without stopping to rest.”
Source: The Mindfulness Survival Kit: Five Essential Practices
“Listen Bhikkhus, just as a buffalo boy recognizes each of his own buffaloes, a bhikkhu recognizes each of the essential elements of his own body. Just as a buffalo boy knows the characteristics and tendencies of each buffalo, a bhikkhu knows which actions of body, speech, and mind are worthy and which are not. Just as a buffalo boy scrubs his animals clean, a bhikkhu must cleanse his mind and body of desires, attachments, anger, and aversions.”
“At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, How strange—all beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, and to be free, yet they don’t know it and they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Sometimes we think and worry nonstop. It’s like having a cassette tape continually turning in our minds. When we leave the television set on for a long time, it becomes hot. Our head also gets hot from all our thinking. When we can’t stop, we may be unable to sleep well. Even if we take a sleeping pill, we continue to run, think, and worry in our dreams. The alternative medicine is mindful breathing. If we practice mindful breathing for five minutes, allowing our body to rest, then we stop thinking for that time. We can use words like ‘in’ and ‘out’ to helps us be aware of our breathing. This is not thinking; these words aren’t concepts. They’re guides for mindfulness of breathing. When we think too much, the quality of our being is reduced. Stopping the thinking, we increase the quality of our being. There’s more peace, relaxation, and rest.”
Source: How to Relax
“Anger is an unpleasant feeling. It is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control and causes us to say and do things that we regret later. When someone is angry, we can see clearly that he or she is abiding in hell. Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made.”
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“We are all capable of recognizing that we are not the only one who suffers, that the other person also suffers very deeply, and that we are partly responsible for his or her suffering.”
Source: Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other
“There is a tendency to speak about your suffering and difficulties so that you can draw more people to support you in order to fight the other side. That is a big temptation. You think if you are strong and you will have more support, the other side will have to withdraw. That is the hope of many people. But we know that activities based on that kind of thinking have gone on for many years without bearing any fruit at all.”
Source: Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other
“Sometimes it is easier to be angry than to express your own suffering.”
Source: Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other
“The Chinese translate Four Noble Truths as "Four Wonderful Truths" or "Four Holy Truths." Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it. If we don't, it isn't holy at all.”
Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
“When you suffer because of discrimination, there's always an urge to speak out. But even if you spend a thousand years speaking out, your suffering won't be relieved. Only through deep understanding and liberation from ignorance can can you be liberated from your suffering.”
Source: Answers from the Heart Publisher: Parallax Press
“Life is suffering, but it is also wonderful. Sickness, old age, death, accidents, starvation, unemployment, and natural disasters cannot be avoided in life. But, if our understanding is deep and our mind free, we can accept these things with tranquility, and the suffering will already be greatly lessened.”
“We try to avoid suffering, but suffering is useful. We need suffering.”
Source: The Art of Communicating
“Each of us needs a reserve of memories and experiences that are beautiful, healthy, and strong enough to help us during difficult moments. Sometimes when the pain in us is so big, we cannot truly touch life’s wonders. We need help. But if we have a strong storehouse of happy memories and experiences, we can bring them to mind to help us embrace the block of pain inside.”
Source: At Home in the World: Stories and Essential Teachings from a Monk's Life
“Some people think that to end suffering, you have to stop everything — body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness —
but that is not correct”
Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
“In this stage, we see that the path has everything to do with our real difficulties in life. A practice that does not concern our real suffering is not a path we need. Many people are awakened during a difficult period in their lives, when they see that living irresponsibly has been the cause of their suffering, and that by transforming their lifestyle they can bring an end to their suffering. Transformation is gradual, but once we see clearly the causes of our suffering, we can make the effort to change our behavior and bring our suffering to an end.”
Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
“There are animals that are ruminants, like water buffalo and cows. After chewing and swallowing, they bring up the food again and they chew and swallow it again. There are people who continue to consume the suffering of the past in that way. They spend their time during the day ruminating over their own suffering from the past.”
Source: The Mindfulness Survival Kit: Five Essential Practices
“True love doesn’t contain suffering or attachment. It brings well-being to ourselves and others.”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“What are you ruminating on? Old suffering?”
Source: Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise
“Without suffering there cannot be happiness. Without mud there cannot be any lotus flowers.”
Source: Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child
“Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth, I vow to use truthful and loving speech. When my mouth is fragrant with right speech, a flower blooms in the garden of my heart.”
Source: Present Moment Wonderful Moment (Revised Edition): Verses for Daily Living-Updated Third Edition