No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.

Where there is suffering, there is happiness.

If we’re feeding our suffering while we’re walking, working, eating, or talking, we are making ourselves victims of the ghosts of the past, of the future, or our worries in the present.

Now the former mortal enemies are busily trading and touring back and forth, and people throughout the world enjoy practicing our tradition’s teachings on mindfulness and peace.

Mindfulness is for making us aware of what is happening now. Not only are there always conditions of happiness present in me, but they are also all around

We all have the habit of running, every one of us. That habit creates tension, not only in the body but in the mind, and it’s a major source of our suffering.

If we know how to handle the little sufferings, we don’t have to suffer on a daily basis. We can practice letting go of what the French call les petites miseres, the little miseries, and save our energy to embrace and soothe the true pains of illness and loss that are unavoidable.

If you practice mindfulness of compassion every day, the seed of compassion in you will become strong. You need only concentrate on it and it will come up as a powerful zone of energy.

When we are full of fear, we are often completely focused on preventing the event we dread, and we forget that joy is also possible even in an unpredictable world.

If we continue to look deeply into the flower, we see many other things, like the earth and the minerals. Without them a flower cannot be. So it’s a fact that a flower is made only of nonflower elements.