Rodney Smith > Quotes

“Life responds when we risk”
― Rodney Smith, Lessons from the Dying

“We are never further from the truth than when we are certain.”
― Rodney Smith, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self

“The cause of our suffering is not what we do, but the way we perceive.”
― Rodney Smith, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self

“Countering the flow of worldly life, death puts an end to all gain and accumulation. It backs us up to the beginning and drops us at birth’s door. The crying this time, however, is not from the pains of birth but from the suffering of having to let go. Death reminds us that we are born to let go. We come in with nothing, and we go out with nothing. In between we attempt to elude this nothing by amassing wealth and knowledge, but these have little to do with life at either end. Life has always been about nothing despite our best efforts to the contrary. This nothing, however, is not an empty despondency or vacuity; rather it is a profound description of who we really are.”
― Rodney Smith, Lessons from the Dying

“After enough suffering we get fed up and begin to explore what suffering is and how to end it.”
― Rodney Smith, Touching the Infinite: A New Perspective on the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness

“We believe we have to prepare sufficiently to meet our struggles and never realize that much of our suffering comes from that very preparation.”
― Rodney Smith, Touching the Infinite: A New Perspective on the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness

“Within the horizontal, we like to imagine we are somewhere we are not. We go on excursions in time, and through our imagination create a better place than the here and now. Desire and fear operate by convincing us that the future is a concrete fact, and the present is malleable and can be shaped through our expectations.”
― Rodney Smith, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self

“Our minds, bodies, roles, responsibilities, relationships, accomplishments, self-images—everything goes with time. Death says, “Build something up, but keep an eye on me. I have the final word.” Death holds us to that word.”
― Rodney Smith, Lessons from the Dying