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Quote by Lailah Gifty Akita

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Lailah Gifty Akita

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“When I wake up on a hot summer morning, I look up and learn from those spinning blades of the ceiling fan, how they are so dependent on the electric power, and that there is nothing wrong in this dependency. They are made for this. They are lifeless, yet always providing comfort and care to a living being like me. I feel blessed. This is how I begin my day—by learning to count the blessings.”

“But whoever develops mindfulness of death, thinking, 'O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morsel of food... for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, that I might attend to the Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal' — they are said to dwell heedfully. They develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the effluents. "Therefore you should train yourselves: 'We will dwell heedfully. We will develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the effluents.' That is how you should train yourselves. -Manassatti sutta (AN 6.19 PTS: A iii 303)”

“In the initial stages, this usually involved evaluating how you were relating to the breath, and detecting more subtle levels of breath energy in the body that would provide a basis for deeper levels of stillness. Once the breath was perfectly still, and the sense of the body started dissolving into a formless mist, this process would involve detecting the perceptions of "space," "knowing," "oneness," etc., that would appear in place of the body and could be peeled away like the layers of an onion in the mind. In either case, the basic pattern was the same: detecting the level of perception or mental fabrication that was causing the unnecessary stress, and dropping it for a more subtle level of perception or fabrication until there was nothing left to drop. -Jhana Not By the Numbers”