#meditation

One evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about nonduality of self and other, but he still didn’t quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind—all the unwanted parts of himself—he didn’t know how to get rid of them. So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and shunyata and how poison is medicine. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just live here together.” At that point, all of them left except one. Milarepa said, “Oh, this one is particularly vicious.” (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.) He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left too. ↗

— Pema Chödrön

#compassion #meditation #tonglen #food

Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity. ↗

— Sharon Salzberg

#meditation #religion #spirituality #religion

The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it. ↗

— James Allen

#intense #man #meditation #more #nature

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment. ↗

— Benjamin Disraeli

#being #brought #conviction #even #existence

Working out, for me, is sort of a meditation. ↗

— Nicole Eggert

#meditation #out #sort #working

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave. ↗

— Pearl S. Buck

#absorb #awful #grave #hands #lean

Fear exists because we do not have faith. ↗

— Shri Radhe Maa

#meditation #quotes-and-saying #quotes-of-life #radhe-guru-maa #radhe-maa

The Stone of Guilt in the River of the Mind, the block in the flow of intelligence. ~ Paramahamsa Nithyananda ↗

— Paramahamsa Nithyananda

#enlightenment #guru #inspirational #meditation #spirituality

Meditation needs no results. Meditation can have itself as an end, I meditate without words and on nothingness. What tangles my life is writing. ↗

— Hélène Cixous

#writing #life

When we stop judging others and ourselves, our heart begins to open. ↗