Doug Kraft > Quotes

“After all, a picture of a cow is not a cow.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map

“How Buddhism Entered the World Like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow,
a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
This is how to contemplate all phenomena. – The Buddha, Diamond Sutra It’s hard to project ourselves back two and a half thousand years into another time, another age, another continent, another country, another economy, another political structure, another social system, and a whole other worldview, and try to intuit the innermost thoughts of a spiritual innovator like the Buddha. However, if we can understand a little better what he experienced and how his contemporaries understood his instructions, we can better know how his teachings relate to us. So before we get to some of the insights, let me share with you some of his story.”
― Doug Kraft, Meditator's Field Guide: Reflections on 57 Insights that Slip Away

“suffering has less to do with the splinter in our finger (the raw sensation) and more to do with the splinter in our mind (what we tell ourselves about the sensation).”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map

“The Buddha found that learning to observe how the mind‐heart works is liberating while trying to control how it works is entrapping (see p. 97–104). If we see only one object, we won’t see how the mind naturally operates.”
― Doug Kraft, Meditator's Field Guide: Reflections on 57 Insights that Slip Away

“Out of desperation, I experimented. I found that choiceless awareness—that is, just being mindful of whatever arose—was easier. And after a while, concentration came by itself. Rather than concentration being a foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness led to greater concentration. This made less sense at the time than it does now. But it worked for me.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map: His Original Teachings on Awakening Ease and Insight in the Heart of Meditation

“One trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in tranquilizing the bodily formation;’ One trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out tranquilizing the bodily formation.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map

“As I said in the introduction, waking up is not easy. But without ease, it is impossible.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map: His Original Teachings on Awakening Ease and Insight in the Heart of Meditation

“Siddhartha Gautama said that “life has dissatisfaction” (dukkha). He didn’t say that “life is suffering and nothing but suffering”—only that we all suffer in larger or smaller ways.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map

“It takes a finger to point to the moon, but woe to the person who mistakes the finger for the moon.”
― Doug Kraft, Buddha's Map