Right Effort
An individual has to be tenacious enough to become enlightened.
If you want to become enlightened, you've got to get all the bullshit out of your life. You have to clear up your mind completely.
It takes quite a bit of time to become enlightened. But it really is not so different from learning any other art; all you need is time, a good teacher, and practice.
No matter how many times you have failed you must keep going forward. Only when you have become humble will you begin to grasp the meaning of life.
Naturally you make millions of stupid mistakes. That's the learning process, and that shouldn't bother you.
It's not what you do - it's the intensity of your feeling that determines how far you go in the spiritual life.
You must learn to meditate and stop your thoughts. You must overcome all egotism and selfishness by serving others. You must cleanse your mind so that enlightenment will find a happy place to reside there.
You may have thousands of lives to go between now and before you're a real hard-core seeker of enlightenment, hardcore meaning you just love it.
When you could be sloppy, you're not. When you could be indulgent, you're not. When you could be sad, you laugh instead. If you fall down, you pick yourself up again and again and again.
Self-honesty is not putting yourself down or feeling sorry for yourself. Self-honesty is looking at things as they are and then being compelled to make changes.
Go do something -- and don't expect that it's going to be fun unless you make it fun. You've got to work on things.
You could go through incarnations forever and never become enlightened, unless of course you do something about it.
In Buddhism what we seek to do is change ourselves into someone who's beautiful to be.
If you're studying Buddhism you never really have enough time because you're going to die.
Balance is the most important of all qualities. We don't want a little bit of rapid growth and then to stagnate. We want continual growth, continual development, which implies balance, always.
Don't follow the crowd. The crowd doesn't get there. They just run round and around in a crazy race. It never ends.
Enlightenment is cumulative. You become a little more enlightened each day as you practice yoga and Buddhism.
Only alone can you go into eternity. Only alone can you feel the transcendental light. It is not a shared experience because if it is shared, you are down in duality.
You can’t teach someone to be enlightened. It’s something you have to go and do. You can’t teach someone to meditate well. It’s something you have to go and do.
Learn not to be attached to other people, to certain types of experiences. Allow the flow of life to guide you wherever it is supposed to and accept with equanimity, with balance, with poise, whatever happens.
Eventually light prevails, you just have to be patient. So practice Buddhism, learn to be enlightened, put a smile on your face, go find a great teacher, meditate, and stay funny.
