Adny Gavell > Adny's Quotes

“The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don’t know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?" --Lama Surya Das”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening To The Sacred: Creating a Spiritual Life from Scratch

“Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness.

Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease.”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past.”
― Lama Surya Das

“Other people can’t cause us to be impatient unless we let them do so. In other words, others don’t make us impatient. We make ourselves impatient, through our expectations and demands, fixated attachments and stuckness.”
― Lama Surya Das

“before speaking, notice what motivates your words.”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening The Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“The secret, or innermost, level of wisdom is pure intuition, clarity, lucidity, innate wakefulness, presence, and recognition of reality. This transcendental wisdom is within all of us—it just needs to be discovered and developed, unfolded and actualized.”
― Lama Surya Das

“Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance.”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“Taking the decision-making process away from people disempowers them. It also makes them much less likely to buy into the decision, however right it may be. One’s own conscience remains the ultimate arbiter.”
― Lama Surya Das

“It almost seems as though this roiling world is conspiring to test our patience at every turn. In fact, it is. With this in mind, we would be wise to look on our imperfect environment as a teacher rather than an antagonist. It constantly shows us that we need to be patient on an ongoing basis, not just every now and then, if we´re going to realize true inner peace, happiness, and fulfillment.”
― Lama Surya Das, Buddha Is as Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living

“I've also learned that you don't always get to pick the people with whom you travel the journey. You sometimes may think you do, but don't be deceived. And the corollary of that - and this was my real lesson - is that you start to realize that you can love even the people you don't like and must love and help everyone.”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“Everything passes, nothing remains. Understand this, loosen your grip and fine serenity...”
― Lama Surya Das

“The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...]”
― Lama Surya Das, Buddha Is as Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living

“The heart is an organ of perception.”
― Lama Surya Das, Words of Wisdom

“It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us." - Tilopa”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“Before speaking, recognize what motivates your words.”
― Lama Surya Das

“By meditating, we´re learning to disengage ourselves from habitual clinging and disperse the defilements and obscurations that hinder our capacity to serve others, such as illusory feelings of scarcity and fears of deprivation. We gradually learn to be more conscious and make better choices. We develop simplicity instead of comlexity, open-mindedness instead of narrow-mindedness, flexibility rather than rigidity. We feel ourselves to be more available to others and to give more generously of ourselves.”
― Lama Surya Das, Buddha Is as Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living

“You are in charge of your own karma, your own life, your own spiritual path, and your own liberation, just as I am in charge of mine.”
― Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

“With every breath, the old moment is lost; a new moment arrives. We exhale and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, we welcome the person we are becoming. We repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. This is life.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das

“Learning how to love is the goal and the purpose of spiritual life—not learning how to develop psychic powers, not learning how to bow, chant, do yoga, or even meditate, but learning to love. Love is the truth. Love is the light.”
― Lama Surya Das

“Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das

“It is usually a mistake to believe that any opinion or situation is objectively good or bad, since everything depends on the perspective of the viewer.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das

“An answer seeks to dissolve the question, a response recognizes the ongoing validity of the question, and seeks to remain in connection with it.”
― Lama Surya Das

“As long as we're preoccupied with our former traumas and triumphs, or our fears and dreams about what might happen down the road, or who said what to whom, it's very difficult to appreciate and cherish the intrinsically joyful gift of life right here and now.”
― Lama Surya Das

“We must never confuse the teacher with the truth.”
― Lama Surya Das

“We all have certain desires and undesired outcomes related to whatever possible course and attitude we take in life, whether it be at the larger macro scale (what shall I do with the rest of my life?) or at the micro level (as in, what route shall I take to work this morning). These include all the myriad choices we make each hour and each day. These choices determine our karma and our destiny. It's no accident, nor any great mystery, how this evolves; although one would have to utterly omniscient to understand all the many gross and subtle interconnections and causative links that determine happenings and outcomes.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das

“So often we mistake movement for meaning.”
― Lama Surya Das

“I have been thinking that the crux of happiness matter for me is whether or not I am in the moment, in the flow, at one with what is happening and I am doing. Otherwise, I'm lost in worry, and anxiety about past and future, plagued by what Buddhist meditators call "comparing mind," comparing what is to other so-called possibilities.”
― Lama Surya Das

“Non-attachment is not complacency. It doesn't imply a lack of caring and commitment. The philosophy of non-attachment is based in the understanding that holding on too tightly to those things, which in any case are always going to be slipping through our fingers, hurts and gives us rope burn.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das

“We are so identified with who we think we are that it limits how we can be, determines how we live, and conditions how we react. As Mark Twain said, "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, but what we are sure we know.”
― Lama Surya Das

“Often we cling to habits that aren't even comforting or satisfying, simply because we are unable to let go or explore new ways to do things.”
― Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: lessons on change, love and spiritual transformation from highly revered spiritual leader Lama Surya Das