Awakening Loving-Kindness

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis.

The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

being as precise as you can and simultaneously as kind as you can, the ability to let go seems to happen to you.

Inquisitiveness or curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open.

The excellent horse, according to the sutra,1 moves before the whip even touches its back; just the shadow of the whip or the slightest sound from the driver is enough to make the horse move. The good horse runs at the lightest touch of the whip on its back. The poor horse doesn’t go until it feels pain, and the very bad horse doesn’t budge until t

The meditation technique itself cultivates precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go—qualities that are innate within us.

there’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy.

The ground of loving-kindness is this sense of satisfaction with who we are and what we have.

We can work with ourselves in the same way. We don’t have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse. We could be very sympathetic with that and use it as a motivation to keep trying to develop ourselves, to find our own true nature. Not