 Wisdom and Compassion
Wisdom and compassion are the cornerstones of Buddha’s teachings. Wisdom includes the teaching of emptiness. Compassion includes the teaching of interbeing or interdependence and altruism based on the insight of interbeing. What do we mean by emptiness? When you say that something is empty, you must ask, “Empty of what?” – Jerome Freedman, Mindfulness Breaks: Your Path to Awakening NOTE: This month we celebrate my teachers, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and Father Eli, who taught me so much about meditation, “mind stories” and visualization. My book, Mindfulness Breaks, Your Path to Awakening, celebrates Thich Nhat Hanh and Father Eli. The book was released last month. Chick on the link below or in the bio for more information. |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for February 06, 2019
 The Mindlessness of Aggression
In the eyes of Great Compassion, there is no separation between subject and object, no separate self. If a cruel and violent person disembowels you, you can smile and look at him with love. It is his upbringing, his situation, and his ignorance that cause him to act so mindlessly. – Thich Nhat Hanh, “Great Compassion” NOTE: This month we celebrate my teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh who is now residing in his original temple, Tu Hieu in Vietnam. According to Plum Village sources, he plans to spend the rest of his days there, walking and visiting the resting place of his teacher. My book, Mindfulness Breaks, Your Path to Awakening, celebrates Thich Nhat Hanh and one of my first teachers, Father Eli. The book is being released this month. Chick on the link below for more information. |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for January 31, 2019
 “Through meditation practice we learn to enter into silence, and there the fruits of the practice reveal themselves: wisdom, which is seeing deeply into the true nature of life, and compassion, the trembling of the heart in response to suffering. Wisdom reveals that we are all part of a whole, and compassion tells us that we can never really stand apart. Through this prism we see life with openness, knowing our oneness. We find wisdom and compassion coming to life, transforming how we understand ourselves and how we understand our world.”
– Sharon Salzberg, A Heart as Wide as the World |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for January 30, 2019
 People whose hearts have been injured armor themselves against further pain, rejecting anything with the potential to touch them deeply. If you tend to respond to love by running or panicking, don’t push yourself. You must eventually get over the problem if you want your emotional wounds to heal, but you can’t force this to happen. Just try to accept as much compassion as possible, in whatever form you can stand it. Persist in this effort and, over time, your resistance to love will relax.
– Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for January 12, 2019
 Great Compassion
The virtues of great compassion are infinite; they could be expounded upon forever without exhausting them, but it boils down to this: Whoever has great compassion can extinguish all obstructions caused by past actions and can fulfill all virtues; no principle cannot be understood, no path cannot be practiced, no knowledge not attained, no virtue not developed. Just as when you want to win people’s hearts you first love their children, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas consider all living beings their children, so if you love all living beings equally, all the Buddhas will be moved to respond. – Zen Master Torei, “Great Compassion” |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for January 05, 2019
 An Ever-Present Refuge
Love and compassion make us feel safe because they express the safety of their source–the deep buddhanature within us, the unchanging inner space of primal awareness that cannot be harmed. By receiving unconditional love and compassion from those who’ve awakened before us, we sense that we too can relax into the very source of such love in the unconditioned nature of our minds, our buddhanature. – John Makransky, “Aren’t We Right to be Angry?” |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for December 26, 2018
 I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility
comes from the development of love and compassion. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It is the ultimate source of success in life. – H.H. 14th Dalai Lama |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for December 25, 2018
 Equanimity is a spacious,
vast, and even state of mind; it does not take sides. It’s not about being untouched by the world, but letting go of fixed ideas. How else are we to develop compassion and loving-kindness for everyone and everything? Equanimity levels the playing field – we are not excluding anyone from our practice. – Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for December 21, 2018
 World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion.
– Dalai Lama |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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Mini Mindfulness Break for November 26, 2018
 We are the curiosity, compassion and intelligence within. Authentic being is the awareness that is aware of it all.
– Cheri Huber |
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May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! All my best,
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