Sylvia Boorstein Quotes

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.

Steadfast benevolence, sustained by the wisdom that anything other than benevolence is painful, protects the mind from all afflictions.

People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives-materialism and consumerism-doesn’t work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart. And an unhappy world.

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.

The Buhha was a monastic, but the practice of mindfulness in the context of any lifestyle is one of renunciation. Every moment of mindfulness renounces the reflexive, self-protecting response of the mind in favor of clear and balanced understanding. In the light of the wisdom that comes from balanced undertanding, attachment to having things be other than what they ar falls away.

My redeemer is always the person next to me.

Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you’ve had a rough day.

Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What’s happening right now and what’s coming up in me in response to what’s happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.

If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.

Buddha also said that the Dharma, like a bird, needs two wings to fly, and that the wing that balances Wisdom is compassion.

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]

We have moments of such clarity, of such appreciation of the incredible web of interconnected events that carry us from breath to breath, day to day, as long as we live-and the next moment we fret about how much we weigh. Or who we didn’t send a Valentine. Or who forgot to compliment the dinner. Or whatever.