email from Daya Jayasinghe
63 sayings from Ajahn Brahm in print
Let Ajahn Brahm’s words guide, inspire and touch your heart.
Delight in developing kindness, peace and wisdom and live a happy and
fulfilling life.
Sīla
Sīla is the Pali term for virtue. It is the cultivation of
harmlessness, kindness, generosity and care by
body, speech and mind. It could also be translated
as character, habit or morality. Your understanding
of what is skilful and what is unskilful, and the
inspiration you get from your own heart or from
seeing living examples, will enable you to let go of
unwholesome habits and tendencies and to develop
the wholesome qualities in your mind. The practice
of morality makes your heart pure, and a pure
heart is a happy heart well prepared for the
practice of meditation
1 )If you want to have a good time, be good.
2) Real beauty does not lie in perfection, but in embracing
and accepting imperfection
3) Love is the ability to embrace the imperfections of another, of ourselves
and of life.
4) Instead of having a fault-finding mind, develop the
beautiful attitude of gratitude
5) Whatever you value, whatever you think is really
important,
that is what will develop and grow.
6) Water the flowers in your garden, don’t water the weeds
7) What you see in others, that’s what they will show you
back.
8) Don’t worry too much about what goes into your mouth.
It’s much more important to worry about what comes out of it
9) A lot of anger comes from not seeing the full picture,
from not
understanding the truth of the matter.
10) What’s more important, being right or living in harmony
together?
11) It’s never his problem, her problem or my problem, it’s always our problem.
We are in this together. That’s how you solve the problem.
12) If there is nothing you can do, then do nothing.If there
is something you can do, then give it all you’ve got.
13) You can’t always cure, but you can always care.
14) Whenever there is a tragedy, it gives us the opportunity
to care, to give, to help and to serve.
15) Always put happiness and joy into whatever you are
doing.
16) Little acts of kindness are huge. They make both you and
others very happy.
These are what we call: instant karmic rewards.
17) Merit is not something you store up for a future life,
it’s what you put into your heart for now.
18) Real generosity is giving, expecting nothing back in
return.
19) Inspiration is a beautiful source of pure energy that
uplifts your heart
20) A lot of the time you learn the most from osmosis, by just
hanging around good people.
21) When you cultivate a beautiful mind throughout the day,
you will have a beautiful mind in meditation.
Samādhi
Samādhi is the Pali term for deep meditation, or for collectedness and
unification of mind. It is not achieved through force or striving, but through
restraining and relinquishing unwholesome qualities and through the cultivation
and development of wholesome ones. Mindfulness and kindness will allow a
positive and happy mind to settle down, and to enter deeper and deeper into
stillness and peace. The purification that happens through the practice of
meditation will give your mind the strength and clarity required to uncover, to
face and to penetrate to the truth.
22) Your real home is not the house you live in, but the
stillness and peace in your heart.
23) Forget about the results. Creating the causes; that’s
your work.
The results will come by themselves.
24) The essence of meditation is your attitude.
25) It’s not important what you are meditating on, but how
you are meditating.
26)Whatever you are aware of, you need that magical
ingredient of kindness.
When you are kind to what you are watching, it relaxes and so do you.
27)Put a lot of attention in the space between you and
whatever you are aware of.
And make sure there are wholesome qualities in that space: kindness,
gentleness, peace and patience.
28) Can you make peace?
Can you be kind?
Can you be gentle?
If you can, then you can meditate.
29) Right intention makes the present moment a pleasant
moment.
30) Delight is the glue that makes your attention stick to
the object.
31) Yes, being a control freak and using willpower may give
you mindfulness.
But it’s not the type of mindfulness that will lead to happiness, stillness or
insight.
Playfulness and joy, the power of wisdom, that creates great mindfulness.
32) The way of meditation is not force and will power, but
wisdom power.
33) The energy of the mind can be directed in two ways:
It can either go into reacting, doing, thinking, struggling and striving;
or
it can go into letting go, not being involved, not getting entangled,
and just being aware without reacting.
34) The more you do, the more you strive, the more you wear
your mind out.
35) Don’t do letting go, let go of doing.
36) Right effort is the effort to stop, to restrain, to let
go to give up, to renounce
37) The nature of the human mind is to be still.
It only moves because of the winds of wanting
38) Meditation is not about attaining more things, but about
letting go of things
and becoming more free.
39) When you want something more, you cannot enjoy what you
already have.
40) It’s very hard to progress in meditation,when you have a
fault-finding mind.
You always see what’s wrong, you never see the beauty.
41) Wherever you happen to be on the path of meditation,
please want to be there.
If you want to be somewhere else, that’s the end of your progress
42) It’s the nature of contentment to deepen –to become more
brilliant, more happy,
more blissful, more profound and empty –if you just stay with it long enough.
Pañña
Pañña is the Pali term for wisdom or insight; seeing the world clearly without
distortion. It is the deep understanding of the human condition that emerges
out of the pure and peaceful mind.
Pañña is always born of silence and stillness, of an open, receptive and
unbiased heart. A mind full of thoughts is not ready to listen deeply enough.
Insight into the nature of things, whether small or huge and life changing,
always sets you free and fills your heart with unconditional love and
compassion for all beings.
43) In Buddhism we don’t fight our defilements,we understand
them.
And when we know them, they disappear.
44) When you face the problem and bring it close to you, you
have a chance to understand it.
When you run away, your face is turned in the opposite direction
45) Wisdom is all around us and insight is there for the
taking,
but when there is too much noise we just can’t hear life teaching us.
46) All thinking is about something. It is always one step
away from penetrating the truth of the matter.
47) You don’t need to give things a name… …just know them.
48) Never allow your knowledge to stand in the way of truth.
49) Don’t bend the truth to fit your beliefs,
bend your beliefs to fit the truth.
50) Life is a flow of unexpected moments.
51) Your future is uncertain.
Whatever you expect it to be,
it will always be totally different.
52) You can either be caught up in this world and in your
desires... or you can be free.
53) Suffering is asking from the world what it can never
give you.
54) Freedom is realising that you can't control life.
55) Pleasure is just a pause between two moments of pain.
And pain is just the space between two moments of pleasure.
56) Whatever disturbance there is,
it only lasts for a few moments.
But if you allow it to echo in your mind,
it will keep on going for a long time.
57) We are prisoners of our own concepts.
58) Hell is a place with an open door.
You send yourself there because of guilt.
If you know what love and forgiveness are, you can walk out any
time you want
59) It’s amazing how free you can be, if you don’t limit
yourself to your past
60) The nature of life is that it settles down and finds a
balance all by itself.
61) Where there is a self, there are things belonging to a
self.
Where there is no self, there is no sense of ownership.
62) When you don’t have a solid sense of self, you can adapt
to whatever situation you happen to be in.
63) When you disappear, when there is no traveller, then the
path becomes as wide as a multi-lane highway - you just can't miss it.
Here we have the video so that you have the choice to use
both.
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=WxW9VlnX5Jc&u=/watch?v%3D8ZdB29o-i-A%26feature%3Dshare
