Buddhist sanity

In my email this morning:

March 29th, 2012 
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration

"Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other."
 
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV 

Favorite herb

Mint is my favorite herb. It's peppy, cheery, tastes good, smells good, loves water and cannot be killed by the toughest New Jersey winter. It just keeps springing back, refusing to be tramped down in its cheery, happy way.

Lemon verbena balm is lovely that way, too. Oh---it's a mint!

It also makes tummies feel better.

It's been so long since Lojong...

Abandon any hope of fruition.

Commentary: The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don'y get caught up in hopes of what you'll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.

Lojong slogan 28, The Compassion Box, Pema Chodron

[59 Buddhist Teachings on Living Life with Fearlessness and Compassion, translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee, with commentary by Pema Chodron]

******

This one is really intense. I read it as, "Stay here. Stay here. STAY HERE!" I do spend time creating the future I want in my head and calling it when I know what I want, so I struggle with this a lot.

But I think the core piece is this: the future doesn't matter.

What matters is what's happening here, now, and how you are responding to it, here and now.

The most important thing is to be fully present, fully awake, fully aware of your triggers, your patterns, your weaknesses, your strengths---and fully able to decide in each moment who you are going to be.

Will you act---react---from your deeply ingrained patterns and places? Will you act from self-protection, fear and pain? Or will you see it all, understand it all, and choose your response based on who you really are at your core---the you whom you want to express in the world when you are awake and at peace?

This---THIS---is what it means to be powerful.

This kind of self-mastery is power worth having.

And this is what I want.

Without question, this is one of the few things about which I can say, at this moment, "WANT, WANT, WANT!"

I may not know what else I want, but right now, I know I want this kind of power.

(no subject)

I think you can only trust people deeply once they have learned to become powerful.

Till then, you work on yourself so you can trust yourself to handle whatever comes up in a respectful, honest and transparent way. I guess this way, you'll always be in the best possible position to act, no matter what happens.

What to do when you feel like dirt

http://www.fluentself.com/blog/not-hating-on-yourself/what-you-do-when-you-feel-like-dirt/

This is a really good part:

"This is where you remember that pain and stuckification and suckiness and feeling like dirt are all temporary, momentary, normal parts of being alive.

They are not the grand sum of your identity. Even when it feels like it is.

Even though I have no idea how long it will take to stop feeling like dirt, I’m going to give myself as much support as I can stand right now. And I’m reminding myself that I am not my thoughts and feelings.

I am larger than all of my thoughts and feelings. I am the being that brings these thoughts and feelings into existence, and I can learn to interact with them instead of being the innocent bystander who keeps getting knocked over by them."