In Buddhist meditation, you do not turn yourself into a battlefield, with good fighting against evil. Both sides belong to you, the good and the evil. Evil can be transformed into good, and vice versa. They are completely organic things.
If you feel irritation or depression or despair, recognize their presence and practice this mantra: “Dear one, I am here for you.” You should talk to your depression or your anger just as you would to a child. You embrace it tenderly with the energy of mindfulness and say, “Dear one, I know you are there, and I am going to take care of you,” just as you would with your crying baby. There is no discrimination or dualism here, because compassion and love are you, but anger is too.
Where the Holy Spirit is, there is also understanding, life, healing, and compassion. Where mindfulness is, true life, solidity, freedom, and healing also manifest.
It is only when we enter into contact with suffering that understanding and compassion can be born. Without suffering, we do not have the opportunity to cultivate compassion and understanding; and without understanding, there can be no true love.
The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is about recognizing the existence of suffering. We must get deeply in touch with suffering to develop understanding.
There is no need to travel a great distance to touch the Kingdom of God, because it is not located in space or time. The Kingdom of God is in your heart.
About ten years ago when I was in Montreal, I noticed that the license plates on the cars had the phrase Je me souviens, “I remember.” I turned to my friend who was driving the car, and I said, “Dear friend, I have a gift for you. Every time you’re driving and you see the phrase Je me souviens, come back to yourself and practice mindful breathing with the thought, ‘I remember to come back to the here and now.’” Since that day, my friends in Montreal practice mindfulness of the breath every time they see a license plate.
The heart of Buddhist practice is to generate our own presence in such a way that we can touch deeply the life that is here and available in every moment. We have to be here for ourselves; we have to be here for the people we love; we have to be here for life with all its wonders.
The Buddha taught that “I” is a combination of the following five elements: our form (physical body) our feelings our perceptions our mental formations our consciousness
In most cases, our perceptions are inaccurate, and we suffer because we are too sure of them. Look at your perceptions and smile to them. Breathe, look deeply into their nature, and you will see that there are many errors in them. For example, that person you are thinking about has no desire to harm you, but you think that he does.
When Nelson Mandela made his first visit to France, the press asked him what he would most like to do. He said, “Sit and do nothing. Ever since I got out of prison, I haven’t had time to just sit down and do nothing.”
You have to eat like a free person. Don’t allow worries, thoughts, and plans to drag you away from the here and now.
There are two things that should be the objects of your attention when you are eating a meal. They are the food and the people around you. Touch these two deeply and live completely in the present moment so that you can experience peace, joy, and happiness.
Everything you are seeking, you should seek in the present moment. To put it in Christian terms, the Kingdom of God is in the present moment.
I have arrived, I am home, In the here and in the now. I am solid, I am free, In the ultimate I dwell.
There are two dimensions to reality. One is called the historical dimension, and the other is called the ultimate dimension. Suppose we are looking at the ocean. On the surface we see waves rising and falling. From the point of view of the waves, there is birth and death, high and low, rising and falling. There are distinctions between waves. But each wave is made of a substance called water. It is a wave, but at the same time, it is water. Concepts such as birth and death, higher and lower, rising and falling apply only to the waves, not to the water itself. So the waves represent the historical dimension, and the water represents the ultimate dimension.
If you are from the Christian tradition, you could say that this ultimate dimension is God. The Kingdom of God is free from birth and death, free from high and low, free from existence and nonexistence.
We see that the present is made up of non-present elements, that is, of the past and the future. The past is always there, accessible. We can enter into deep contact with the past through the present. That is true for the future, too. Normally we say that the future is not here yet, but we can touch it right now by getting deeply in touch with the present moment.
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