86 Quotes by Joseph Goldstein

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad thing come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

Munindra-ji, one of my first Dharma teachers, used to say that in spiritual practice, time is not a factor. Practice cannot be measured in time, so let go of the whole notion of when and how long. The practice is a process unfolding, and it unfolds in its own time. It is like the flowers that grow in the spring. Do you pull them up to make them grow faster?

In Buddhist psychology “conceit” has a special meaning: that activity of the mind that compares itself with others. When we think about ourselves as better than, equal to, or worse than someone else, we are giving expression to conceit. This comparing mind is called conceit because all forms of it – whether it is “I’m better than” or “I’m worse than,” or “I’m just the same as” – come from the hallucination that there is a self; they all refer back to a feeling of self, of “I am.

Hatred never ceases by hatred; it only ceases by love.

No longer do we look outside of ourselves for solutions. We have seen where the path lies. All we require are the skillful means that will help us walk it.

The entire spiritual journey rests on the morality of nonharming. This is the expression of the love and care we feel both for others and for ourselves.

The commitment to morality, or non-harming, is a source of tremendous strength, because it helps free the mind from the remorse of having done unwholesome actions. Freedom from remorse leads to happiness. Happiness leads to concentration. Concentration brings wisdom. And wisdom is the source of peace and freedom in our lives.

As a solid mass of rock Is not moved by the wind, So a sage is not moved by praise and blame.

In meditation practice, we build the energy of awareness until it grows powerful enough to see entirely different levels of reality.