If awareness, compassion, and wisdom were qualities we could attain or develop, it would make perfect sense to do something to cultivate them. But we don’t have to cultivate them because they are part of our basic nature. We already have them. And any attempt to change, fix, or improve what’s happening in the present moment reinforces the old belief that we’re missing something. On the other hand, if we do nothing, we’re right were we started. Nothing will change.

The key to this paradox is recognition. Buddhanature isn’t something we do, but it is something we need to recognize. As your familiarity with this quality of being grows, you will begin to see that compassion and wisdom are right here. You will realize that you will never be more perfect that you are right now, in this very moment.

~Mingyur Rinpoche

deep. well. being. alive.

inquiry for today~ may your day unfold in the fresh light of noticing…..

when I doubt

What we call suffering, and experience as suffering, isn’t actually suffering. It is confusion, illusion, misperception. Suchness is the only thing we ever really experience. Reality is not, as we imagine it to be, difficult and painful. It is always only just as it is suchness. Mind is like this. It is deep, pure, and silent. But when the winds of delusion blow, its surface stirs and what we call suffering results. But the waves of my suffering are nothing more or less than mind. And even as I rage, the depths below remain quiet. Life is the wind. Life is the water. As long as life appears as phenomena there will be the stirrings of delusion. Delusion is in fact the movement, the stirring, of awakening. My ocean mind is inherently pure and serene, always. When I know this, I can navigate the waves with grace.

~Norman Fischer