“...mindfulness - it isn t a trick or a gimmick. It s being present in the moment. When I m with you, I m with you. Right now. That s all. No more and no less.”
“Sometimes we don t need to eat or drink as much as we do, but it has become a kind of addiction. We feel so lonely. Loneliness is one of the afflictions of modern life. It is similar to the Third and Fourth Precpets--we feel lonely, so we engage in conversation, or even in a sexual relationship, hoping that the feeling of loneliness will go away. Drinking and eating can also be the result of loneliness. You want to drink or overeat in order to forget your loneliness, but what you eat may bring toxins into your body. When you are lonely, you open the refrigerator, watch TV, read magazines or novels, or pick up the telephone to talk. But unmindful consumption always makes things worse (68).”
“If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn t inherent in the place but in your state of mind.”
“In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain t many!”
“The greatest gift you can give (yourself or anyone else) is just being present”
“I vow to ingest only items that preserve well-being, peace, and joy in my body and my consciousness... Practicing a diet is the essence of this precept. Wars and bombs are the products of our consciousness individually and collectively. Our collective consciousness has so much violence, fear, craving, and hatred in it, it can manifest in wars and bombs. The bombs are the product of our fear... Removing the bombs is not enough. Even if we could transport all the bombs to a distant planet, we would still not be safe, because the roots of the wars and the bombs are still intact in our collective consciousness. Transforming the toxins in our collective consciousness is the true way to uproot war (72-73).”
“We live in an incredibly dynamic universe that gives us what we wish for, like a waking dream”
“Pruned my subconscious. Discovered new shoots.”
“Full minds create chaos.”
“Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66).”
“On the topic of exercise, It s just as important as brushing your teeth everyday, more important than watching TV or reading online or answering email. Make time for something so crucial to a good life.”
“Our minds of infinite possibilities have been plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death.”
“[Some scientific] experiments…tell us that what we consider the objective world depends in some measure on our own conscious processes. There is no fixed eternal reality……… true understanding is not to be achieved with the rational mind.”