Quotes by Buddhist Nuns

Many religions have meditations on death to let it penetrate our thick skulls that life doesn’t last forever.

Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

Two kinds of selfish people: the unwise and the wise. Unwise selfish people think only of themselves, and the result is confusion and pain. Wise selfish people know that the best thing they can do for themselves is to be there for others. As a result, they experience joy.

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.

It seems that, without clarity and honesty, we don't progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking like we've been sucking on lemons. We become so caught up in introspection that we lose any contentment or gratitude we might have had. The sense of being irritated by ourselves and our lives and other people's idiosyncrasies becomes overwhelming. That's why there's so much emphasis on kindness.

It's helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing withwhatever arises, without picking and choosing.

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

The first noble truth says simply that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort.

If we emphasized only precision, our meditation might become quite harsh and militant. (...). One thing that is very helpful is to cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.

There isn’t any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.

Meditation practice is not about later, when you get it all together and you’re this person you really respect.

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.