“It is never too late.

Even if you are going to die tomorrow, keep yourself straight and clear and be a happy human being today. If you keep your situation happy day by day, you will eventually reach the greatest happiness of Enlightenment.

If your spiritual practice and the demands of your everyday life are not in harmony, it means there’s something wrong with the way you are practicing. Your practice should satisfy your dissatisfied mind while providing solutions to the problems of everyday life. If it doesn’t, check carefully to see what you really understand about your religious practice…

These days we have no shortage of intellectual information, but I truly believe there is a shortage of fertilization. We collect so much information, but we do very little with it. This is why we have so little success in our spiritual practice…

Religion is not just some dry intellectual idea but rather your basic philosophy of life: you hear a teaching that makes sense to you, find through experience that it relates positively with your psychological makeup, get a real taste of it through practice, and adopt it as your spiritual path.

That’s the right way to enter the spiritual path…

Whether we sit with our arms folded this way and our legs crossed that way is of little consequence. But it is extremely important to check and see if whatever meditation we do is an actual remedy for our suffering…

When Lord Buddha spoke about suffering, he wasn’t referring simply to superficial problems like illness and injury, but to the fact that the dissatisfied nature of the mind itself is suffering. No matter how much of something you get, it never satisfies your desire for better or more. This unceasing desire is suffering; its nature is emotional frustration.

Be gentle first with yourself—if you wish to be gentle with others.

We are not compelled to meditate by some outside agent, by other people, or by God. Rather, just as we are responsible for our own suffering, so are we solely responsible for our own cure. We have created the situation in which we find ourselves, and it is up to us to create the circumstances for our release.

If there is something you truly want to know, then you truly want to listen to your own wisdom. You know, meditation is learning how to listen with your own wisdom, so that you can see. I think why meditation is amazingly important, is that somehow our unconscious world is much bigger. It is huge, universal, and we don’t understand that one. Meditation allows this world to be light and knowable, understandable. That is why it is important. Normally we are totally robbed by the egotistic, conventional mind, not allowing the fundamental mind to be functioning. That is why one should have confidence, truly… through experience, one has confidence in one’s spiritual journey.” ~from Wisdom Energy and The Bliss of Inner Fire by Lama Thubten Yeshe

If you have never had the privilege of hearing and seeing Lama Thubten Yeshe teach the Dharma, then you should definitely treat yourself by watching the video below. It is an introduction to Tantric Buddhism, and this is part 1 of a lot! I appreciate the way Lama Yeshe respects the dignity and power of silent space…using silence as a teaching. But if you do not, fast forward to 4:14…

—

Elephant Meditation is now on twitter… Click here to follow us!

Elephant 365 is an example of Elephant Journal’s commitment to the Mindful Life. Everyday we will offer a new reading regarding meditation practice and the spiritual path, all infused with a fresh perspective on traditional spirituality. If you would like to follow Elephant 365 on FaceBook click here and become a fan of Elephant Meditation by clicking the “Like” tab at the top of the page.