Tuesday, January 24, 2017

SHAKE THEM ALL OFF

"As long as you’re still alive and breathing, 
don’t let yourself be heedless or complacent.
Don’t let time pass you by to no purpose.
Hurry up and accelerate your efforts at developing goodness—
for when there’s no more breath for you to breathe, 
you’ll have no more opportunity to do good ...
You should focus exclusively on whatever thoughts help make the mind firm so that it can give rise to goodness.
Don’t dally with any other kinds of thinking, 
regardless of whether they seem more sophisticated or less.
Shake them all off.
Don’t bring them into the mind to think about.
Keep the mind firmly set in a single preoccupation: 

that’s your true heart, 
the true heart of the Buddha’s teachings."
~~~
Snakes, Fires, & Thieves in Starting Out Small: A Collection of Talks for Beginning Meditators, by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo

No comments:

Post a Comment