HENEPOLA GUNARATANA

Whatever attitudes we habitually use toward ourselves, we will use on others, and whatever attitudes we habitually use toward others, we will use on ourselves.

Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything.

Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.

The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.

When you have learned compassion for yourself, compassion for others is automatic.

Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions.

The purpose of meditation is personal transformation.

Peace is not a thought, not a concept; it is a nonverbal experience.

You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.

By silencing the mind, we can experience real peace. As long as various kinds of thoughts agitate the brain, we don't experience 100 percent peace.

You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option: You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion.

The present moment is changing so fast that we often do not notice its existence at all. Every moment of mind is like a series of pictures passing through a projector. Some of the pictures come from sense impressions. Others come from memories of past experiences or from fantasies of the future.

Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens.

Meditation changes your character.

DUE TO OUR FEELINGS ARISING FROM CONTACT, we think and we rationalize, conceptualize, theorize, philosophize and speculate. Because of the feeling arising from the six senses, we increase our desire; we come to wrong views and wrong beliefs. We recall our past sights, smells, sounds, tastes, touches and ideas and build up more desires, thoughts, concepts, beliefs, ideas, theories and philosophies.

[M]orality is not a ritualistic obedience to a code of behavior imposed by an external authority. It is rather a healthy habit pattern that you have consciously and voluntarily chosen to impose upon yourself because you recognize its superiority to your present behavior.

Vipassana: looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct, piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing.

Each step along the Buddha's path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life.

They have no power over you. It's all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won't do it.

The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

You can only have bliss if you don't chase it.

No matter how hard you pursue pleasure and success, there are times when you fail. No matter how fast you flee, there are times when pain catches up with you.

Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation.

Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.

No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.