In this talk, Zach explores the power of thought, and how we can intentionally lay down positive mental patterns. Often our mind isn’t ready to hear the dharma, we need to prepare it first. Recognizing the limits of the mind, we can rest in the limitless heart.
Intro Poem, Our Day Is Not Complete, part of the 108 Savasana Poems collection, click here to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/108-Savasana-Poems-Blissful-Words/dp/1092978712/
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“Everything has already been said, but since no one was listening, we have to start again.”
– Andre Gide
“Here I shall say nothing that has not been said before,
And in the Art of prosody I have no skill
I therefore have no thought that this might be of benefit to others
I wrote it only to habituate my mind.
My faith will thus be strengthened for a little while
That I might grow accustomed to this virtuous way.
But others who now chance upon my words
May profit also, equal to myself in fortune.”
– Shantideva’s introduction to the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra
The Dharma exists everywhere. It exists everywhere, regardless of place, culture, creed, language, or race. Therefore, as I talk to you now, it isn’t a matter of having you understand or listen to my dharma. The dharma is not something that belongs to any one person. It belongs to anyone who attains it. It is unbiased and unblemished, it is something unborn and imperishable. It is the condition of each of you right now. All things, including yourself, are the Dharma. Since each of you is the Dharma itself, there is the possibility that here, right now, without restoring to any ways or means, you yourself can directly verify this.
– Unknown
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a person speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows them, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a person speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows them, like a shadow that never leaves them.
– Dhamma Pada
“The temple bell stops ringing,
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers”
– Bashō
“Who is it that’s unhappy? The one who finds fault.”
– John Welwood
“Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.”
– Lao Tzu
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Gandhi
“The specific forms that love take in our lives arise and pass in time,
for this is the way of form. Time is the great dissolver.
But love itself is that which never comes and goes.
We never know what form love will choose to take in the future,
for there is no love in the future. Love is only now.
But it can take a cleansing of perception to see through the veil,
behind the scenes where love is always at work…
giving birth to one of its forms, one of its children,
while recycling and dissolving another.
If we become too fused with a specific form we believe
we need love to take—a particular person or way
of finding purpose and meaning—our heart will inevitably
break when love obliterates that form for something new,
which it always will. This shattering is the great gift of form,
evidence not of error and mistake,
but of wholeness and profound compassion.
This dissolution and reorganization is a special kind of grace
that the conventional mind struggles to know.
But the heart knows. The body knows.”
– Matt Licata, from A Healing Space
“You can’t stop the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.”
– Sharon Creech
