Awaken The World Through Enlightened Media

Quotes by Joan Halifax Roshi

March 7, 2022
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“The awakened Way is unsurpassable. Nothing is greater than awakening to the fact that you and I abide in ultimate closeness.”
“We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival.”
‘The wondrous thing is that people are dying all around us and we do not realize that it can happen to us.”
‘Compassion is the ability to see clearly into the nature of suffering.”
“I learned that any attachment to outcome would deeply distort my capacity to be truly present to the whole person.”
“The enemies of genuine compassion: pity, moral outrage, and fear.”
“All beings, including each one of us, enemy and friend alike, exist in patterns of mutuality, interconnectedness, co-responsibility and ultimately in unity.”
“Zen practice is about relating to each other face to face, mind to mind, heart to heart…with nothing but clear, connecting space between us.”
“We believe that it takes a strong back and a soft front to face the world.”
“In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?”
“This stuff of a past not worthily lived is also medicine.”
“Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way.”
“When we have disorderly lives, it makes it difficult for our minds to be orderly and for us to be at ease with disorder.”
“Here in the West, we think of space as separation. But in the East, space indicates gaplessness.”
“We know this human body is precious, so how can we justify harming one another?”
“The good work that we do with others comes out of something that is painful in our lives…and deeply painful in the life of the world. We long to come home and to bring all beings home.”
“Creations are numberless. They will be arising within us forever. Continually liberate them by dissolving any sense of separation between you and YOU.”
“Delusions are inexhaustible. Transform them with every breath that you bring into the body and every breath that you give away. Realize that you are YOU.”
“In the view of the radical optimist, there is no good death, no bad death. Death is, that is all.”
“In our lives, there are endless dharma events; each moment is a dharma event, a truth event.”
“Radical optimism is a big view of the moment that does not include outcome.”
“Since we are already Buddhas, happy and suffering Buddhas, wise and confused Buddhas, we are already Buddha.”
“Death can come at any moment. You could die this afternoon; you could die tomorrow morning; you could die on your way to work; you could die in your sleep. Most of us try to avoid the sense that death can come at any time, but its timing is unknown to us. Can we live each day as if it were our last? Can we relate to one another as if there were no tomorrow?”
“Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.”
“In accepting death as inevitable, we don’t label it as a good thing or a bad thing. As one of my teachers once said to me, “Death happens. It is just death, and how we meet it is up to us.”
“Cease consuming, practice generosity.”