The masters say if you create an auspicious condition in your body and your environment then meditation and realization will automatically arise.
Interpretation
Creating a supportive environment and a healthy body leads to better meditation and spiritual insight.
This quote suggests that the quality of our physical state and surroundings plays a crucial role in our ability to meditate effectively and attain deeper understanding. By cultivating a favorable environment and taking care of our bodies, we open ourselves up to the natural process of meditation and the insights that come with it.
In practice
Use this quote during a meditation workshop to emphasize the importance of creating the right atmosphere.
Sit, then, as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that try to bother it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar
Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.
There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.
{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don't question or doubt whether I am in the "correct" state or not. There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am.
We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them.
In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.
Everybody has losses - it's unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.
There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.
Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.
Never say any man is hopeless, because he only represents a character, a bundle of habits, which can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
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