If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
Interpretation
Deep emotional experiences are essential for true meditation.
This quote emphasizes that genuine meditation is not merely a practice of calming the mind, but a profound engagement with one's emotions. To truly meditate is to confront and understand our deepest feelings, including sorrow, allowing for a richer and more transformative experience in both meditation and life.
In practice
In a retreat, when discussing the role of emotions in mindfulness, this quote can be shared to illustrate the depth of experience in meditation.
Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You'll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are - no holding on, no attachment, free.
When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.
To observe and watch one's own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues. Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one's own mind.
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.
The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.
Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.
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