"...You, who are inclined to escape from the states of mundane existence, hold fast to the jewel of the spirit of awakening." Shantideva
"Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought occurred to me: 'When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to death, not beyond death, sees another who is dead, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to death, not beyond death. And if I — who am subject to death, not beyond death — were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on seeing another person who is dead, that would not be fitting for me.' As I noticed this, the living person's intoxication with life entirely dropped away."
— AN 3.38
This existence of ours is as transient as Autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is a flash of lightning in the sky. Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) - "The Founder of Buddhism"
"....one who has awakened, awakened to the nature of life and death and the world in which we live, awakened to the body and mind. So the purpose of practicing meditation, the buddhist and other traditions, is not to become a meditator, or a spiritual person, or a Buddhist, or to join something. Rather it is to understand this capacity we have as humans to awaken.
"...to that which is universal, to the laws of the universe, [and the] teachings which describe it."
"...the way things work are here to be dicovered; they're quite immediate!"
Jack Kornfield - copyrighted 1995 Dharmanet.net
Attachment, as a creation of ignorance, is responsible for some of our greatest sufferings.
It can appear as attachment for people, places, or things.
But, perhaps the most damage is done when we attach, or cling, to beliefs and concepts. This attachment follows us wherever we go, hindering our ability to see things as they really are, thus promoting ignorance.
Even memories can be a great source of attachment, because we wished the moment of our memory to never change, and we cling to that moment even though it is already gone. Thus we live either in the past, which no longer exists, or our thoughts are in the future, where we imagine that moment will come again.
And it is thus that we MISS our entire life, because we are never truly here!
“I have already forgotten yesterday, and I know nothing of tomorrow, perhaps because neither exist!”
S.O.E.
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