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We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the Ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.

How can a troubled mind understand the way?

Your worst enemy cannot harm you
As much as your own thoughts, unguarded.

But once mastered,
No one can help you as much,
Not even your father or your mother.

How joyful to look upon the awakened
And to keep company with the wise.

Follow then the shining ones,
The wise, the awakened, the loving,
For they know how to work and forbear.

But if you cannot find
Friend or master to go with you,
Travel on alone--
Like a king who has given away his kingdom,
Like an elephant in the forest.

If the traveler can find
A virtuous and wise companion
Let him go with him joyfully
And overcome the dangers of the way.
Follow them
As the moon follows the path of the stars.

~The Dhammapada

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"No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Thus the Zen Master warns his disciple: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"

The following is the eschatological laundry list excerpt from Sheldon Kopp's If you Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him:

1. This is it.

2. There are no hidden meanings.

3. You can't get there from here, and besides there is no place to go.

4. We are already dying, and we'll be dead a long time.

5. Nothing lasts!

6. There is no way of getting all you want.

7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.

8. You only get to keep what you give away.

9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.

10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there's no compensation for misfortune.

11. You have the responsibility to do your best nonetheless.

12. It's a random universe to which we bring meaning.

13. You really don't control anything.

14. You can't make anyone love you.

15. No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.

16. Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.

17. There are no great men.

18. If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way.

19. Everyone lies, cheats, pretends. (yes, you too, and most certainly myself.)

20. All evil is potentially vitality in need of transformation.

21. All of you is worth something if you will only own it.

22. Progress is an illusion.

23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.

24. Yet it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution.

25. Childhood is a nightmare.

26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up.

27. Each of us is ultimately alone.

28. The most important things each man must do for himself.

29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.

30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.

31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.

32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.

33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.

34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.

35. No excuses will be accepted.

36. You can run, but you can't hide.

37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.

38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.

39. The only victory lies is in surrender to oneself.

40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.

41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

42. What do you know for sure...anyway?

43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.

Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and author whose teachings and writings on meditation have helped make Buddhism accessible to a broad Western audience. I have a couple of her books and admire her immensely. This last week she interviewed with Bill Moyers for his PBS special Faith & Reason. The first few paragraphs from her beautiful book The Wisdom of No Escape follow:

"There's a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. you can see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passioante, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we're committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we're going to run; we'll never know what's beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. ... But loving-kindness --- maitri --- toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest."

Krishnamurti says that all it takes is an instant "seeing" of the things as they are. Not thinking or idealizing or pursuing or progressing towards other things or ideals but just "seeing" things as they are in this very moment. This is opposite to the psychological evolution that most operate under. Psychological evolution is the problem he says.

There is no psychological evolution. One is what one is or one is something else not based on reality but rather based on fantasies and visions in our mind. To see through this doesn't take an immense amount of time and effort, it simply takes the understanding to do it. Once one has this understanding then all that's left is to stop the diversionary thought worlds and efforts at "self-improvement" and simply be the real you that has always been.

Be what you are here and now, yesterday and tomorrow. Don't try to figure out what that is for then you just end up creating another ideal or fantasy image in your mind, rather stop all that and settle into the presence all around and within you right now.

Also, he says there's no methodology or "way" of achieving this for that in itself is another form of dogma, ritual, fantasy path that only leads away from what is already here. He understands the existence of conditioning and the barriers that this conditioning can present to those who would like to circumvent it. Again, he simply says to "see" this conditioning and then it is no longer a problem it simply is a part of what is.

It is not something to "get rid of" or work at "undoing", rather it is a part of the reality of what is and therefore is to be "seen", recognized, acknowledged, yet not scorned or cursed. It is real and therefore can only be seen or ignored and to ignore something that is real and a part of you is to deal in fantasy and idealization.

"Like two birds of beautiful golden plumage--inseparable companions-- the individual self and the immortal Atman are perched on the branches of the self-same tree. The former tastes the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree. The latter remains motionless, calmly watching."

"The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of its identity with the Divine Atman, grieves, bewildered by its own helplessness. When it recognizes the Lord--who alone is worthy of our worship--as its own Atman, and beholds its own glory, it becomes free from all grief."

"The fable of the two birds is intended to teach us the truth about Man's real and apparent nature. It teaches that Man suffers only because he is ignorant of his true Being. God is. He is the absolute Reality, "ever-present in the hearts of all." He is the blissful Atman which sits, calmly watching the restlessness of its companion. And the fable goes on to tell us that, at last, the two birds merge into one. The Atman is all that exists."

Two famous passages from the Mundaka Upanishad and an excerpt from an essay by Swami Prabhavananda.

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins.

Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-bide with black.

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn't, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don't. So because it doesn't get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It's like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It's also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place.

God also like to play hide-and-seek, but becaus there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. but that's the whole fun of it--just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self--the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

Of course, you must remember that God isn't shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren't, we wouldn't know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn't any outside to him. The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as 'he' and not 'she,' God isn't a man or a woman. I didn't say 'it' because we usually say 'it' for things that aren't alive.

God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

You amy ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world.
~Alan Watts

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayal or have shriveled and closed for fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning you to be careful, to be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God's presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon "YES!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live, or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me where or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer