Sylvia Boorstein

“Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodation is a gratifying choice.”

“The end of health or of vigor is sad. [p. 149]”

“All losses are sad. The end of an important relationship is also a death. When people fall out of love with each other, or when what seemed like a solid friendship falls into ruin, the hope for a shared future--a hope that provided a context and a purpose to life--is gone. [p. 149]”

“Sadness isn't a kilesha, a habit pattern evoked by challenge. Sadness sis what the mind feels when it is bereaved or bereft. All the wisdom in the world about the inevitability of change or the lawfulness of does not ease the heaviness in the mind that we feel when we lose someone, or something, we hold dear [p. 148]. ”

“May I meet this moment fully. May I meet it as a friend.”

“... although I knew what issues had been most difficult for me in my life, I may not have known the depth of the feeling I had about them. ... When those stories, with their feelings, returned ... I paid attention to them. What I tell people now it, 'Try to keep your mind hospitable. This needs to visit for a while. Don't be afraid.' [p. 122]”

“If I can't see around my personal story, I'll have no way to see sit in context: This is one event in a life of events. It is whatever it is, but it is temporal. The pain is terrible, but it won't last. I can manage it. or this joy is incredible, but it won't last. Celebrate it now! [pp. 104-105]”

“Speech that compliments is, by definition, free from derision, which clouds the mind with enemies and makes it tense. Kind speech makes the mind feel safe and also glad. [p.74]”

“Here's a practice idea for right now. Choose one of those sets of phrases. ... Plan on taking some time to say those words over and over, as you would an ardent prayer. Set some time aside for this. (Fifteen minutes would be a good start.) Then sit comfortably. Later on, you can say these phrases walking about or doing chores or even riding your bike--but for now, just sit. That way you can look at the words."Say each phrase as if you expect it will feel different in your mind--they are slightly different wishes--and feel how each of them echoes in your mind and body. [pp. 72-73]”

“May I feel contented and safe.May I feel protected and pleased.May my physical body support me with strength.May my life unfold smoothly with ease. [p. 71]”

“Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61]”

“Safely connected to my life, and reassured of my essential goodness, I feel at ease, at home, really in the most sublime of homes. [p. 58]”

“The responses of friendliness, compassion, and appreciation that I felt ...--all situational permutations of basic goodwill--depended on my mind's being relaxed and alert enough to notice both what was happening around me and what was happening as my internal response. [p.50]”

“... change and loss and sadness and grief are the shared lot of all human beings ... we are all making our way from one end of life to the other hoping--for whatever intervals of time we can manage it--to feel safe and content and strong and at ease. [p.40]”

“Knowing ... that the struggle to create a different current reality is to no avail helps keep the attention present even when experience is painful. ... the same wisdom that keeps the attention alert and present in painful circumstances includes the awareness ... that human beings feel about things, that we lament or yearn or grieve even when we understand that things can't be different. [p. 33]”

“... the moment in which the mind acknowledge 'This isn't what I wanted, but it's what I got' is the point at which suffering disappears. Sadness might remain present, but the mind ... is free to console, free to support the mind's acceptance of the situation, free to allow space for new possibilities to come into view. [p. 29]”

“Everything is always changing."There is a cause-and-effect lawfulness that governs all unfolding experience."What I do matters, but I am not in charge. Suffering results from struggling with what is beyond my control. [pp. 27-28]”

“I know whether or not I am confused most readily by noticing--being mindful of--my capacity for feeling caring concern. ... when I feel myself in caring connection--encouraging, consoling, or appreciating--I feel the twin pleasures of clarity and goodness. It doesn't matter if the connection I feel is to myself or a person I know or people I don't know or even the whole world. The lively impulse of caring is what counts. [p. 20]”

“I am more able to recognize when my mind has gotten itself into trouble and increasingly eager to mobilize the energy to rescue it. Concentration and mindfulness, as remedies to confusion, are either self-activating ... or at least reasonably available remedies to confusion. [pp. 17-18]”

“Effort, concentration, and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom NO external action needs to happen. [p. 17]”

“I love the phrase 'I am not afraid!' Maybe it's the best phrase we can say, other than 'I have everything I need.' Maybe they are the same. [p. 14]”

“... you are in pain. Relax. Take a breath. Let's pay attention to what is happening. Then we'll figure out what to do. [p. 10]”

“Becoming aware of fragility, of temporality, of the fact that we will surely all be lost to one another, sooner or later, mandates a clear imperative to be totally kind and loving to each other always [p.119].”

“... the delicacy, the impermanence, the emptiness of mind states. Just like the weather, they blow in and out. Good mood. Bad mood. Tranquil mood. Frazzled mood [p. 105].”

“One of the ways we build intimate relationships with other people is by sharing our fears with them, telling them the things that still frighten us. ..."When we begin to appreciate the ways in which people have been frightened in their lives, we can be compassionate toward them, rather than angry [p. 97].”

“... if anger arises in the mind in response to an outside event, it's helpful to look for either the saddening or frightening aspect of that event and then take whatever measures we can to address the sadness or the fear. Knowing that negativity or aversion is a transient energy never means to ignore it. It means to see it clearly, always, and work with it wisely [p. 85].”

“Anger is often a big problem for people who grew up in families where the overt expression of anger was an everyday occurrence. They have too much opportunity to practice anger and not enough sense of the other possibilities. Rage becomes, for them, the habitual response of the mind to unpleasant situations. ... When people begin to see that anger, like any other mind energy, is just a transient phenomenon and therefore workable, they are very relieved [p. 83].”

“I want to feel deeply, and whenever I am brokenhearted I emerge more compassionate. I think I allow myself to be brokenhearted more easily, knowing I won't be irrevocably shattered [p. 59]”

“... every single act we do has the potential of causing pain, and every single thing we do has consequences that echo way beyond what we can imagine. It doesn't mean we shouldn't act. It means we should act carefully. Everything matters [p. 41].”

“Being trapped by fear is a form of delusion. Either I can do something or I can't. If I truly can't ... I don't do it. If I truly can, and it wold be a wholesome thing to do, I push myself [p. 39].”

“... freedom of choice is possible. Life is going to unfold however it does: pleasant or unpleasant, disappointing or thrilling, expected or unexpected, all of the above! What a relief it would be to know that whatever wave comes along, we can ride it out with grace [p. 35].”

“Right Understanding means feeling terrible, remembering pain is finite, and taking some solace from that remembering. And, when things are pleasant, even splendidly pleasant, remembering impermanence doesn't diminish the experience--it enhances it [p. 33]”

“... Fear doesn't frighten me as much as it used to. I know it's from clinging, and I know it will pass [p. 29].”

“It is possible to cultivate a mind so spacious that it can be passionate and awake and responsive and involved and care about things, and noty struggle [p. 23]”

“Pain is inevitable; lives come with pain. Suffering is not inevitable. If suffering is what happens when we struggle with our experience because of our inability to accept it, then suffering is an optional extra [p. 19].”

“... life is difficult and painful, just by its very nature, not because we're doing it wrong [pp. 17-18].”

“They were struggling and often in quite a lot of pain and concern, but still, they were all right. I thought to myself as I looked around, 'What we're all doing is we're all managing gracefully.' [p.5]”

“Mindfulness, the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience, is at the heart of what the Buddha taught. This book is meant to be a basic Buddhist primer, but no one should be daunted. It's easier than you think [p. 4]”

“Some of my most precious moments of insight have been those in which I have seen clearly that gratitude is the only possible response." (Sylvia Boorstein, from "You Don't Look Buddhist")”

“The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.”

“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.It isn't more complicated that that.It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is,without either clinging to it or rejecting it. ”