| ramaquotes@yahoo.com 2005-11-28, 1:00 am |
| The Eightfold Path of Buddhism - Right Effort - Quotations by Zen
Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz.
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Right Effort:
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An individual has to be tenacious enough to become enlightened.
It takes quite a bit of time to become enlightened. But it really is
not so different from learning any other art; all you need is time, a
good teacher, and practice.
No matter how many times you have failed you must keep going forward.
Only when you have become humble will you begin to grasp the meaning of
life.
It's not what you do - it's the intensity of your feeling that
determines how far you go in the spiritual life.
You must learn to meditate and stop your thoughts. You must overcome
all egotism and selfishness by serving others. You must cleanse your
mind so that enlightenment will find a happy place to reside there.
You may have thousands of lives to go between now and before you're a
real hard-core seeker of enlightenment, hardcore meaning you just love
it.
When you could be sloppy, you're not. When you could be indulgent,
you're not. When you could be sad, you laugh instead. If you fall down,
you pick yourself up again and again and again.
Self-honesty is not putting yourself down or feeling sorry for
yourself. Self-honesty is looking at things as they are and then being
compelled to make changes.
You could go through incarnations forever and never become enlightened,
unless of course you do something about it.
In Buddhism what we seek to do is change ourselves into someone who's
beautiful to be.
If you're studying Buddhism you never really have enough time because
you're going to die.
Balance is the most important of all qualities. We don't want a little
bit of rapid growth and then to stagnate. We want continual growth,
continual development, which implies balance, always.
Don't follow the crowd. The crowd doesn't get there. They just run
round and around in a crazy race. It never ends.
Enlightenment is cumulative. You become a little more enlightened each
day as you practice yoga and Buddhism.
Only alone can you go into eternity. Only alone can you feel the
transcendental light. It is not a shared experience because if it is
shared, you are down in duality.
Learn not to be attached to other people, to certain types of
experiences. Allow the flow of life to guide you wherever it is
supposed to and accept with equanimity, with balance, with poise,
whatever happens.
We know we should be completely humble; we should stop thinking that
we're very marvelous because we're not. We're interesting at best
because we are a part of life.
- Zen Master Rama
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Thank you in advance for your religious tolerance.
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