Deirdre Blomfield Brown Quotes

“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. (10)”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us ... It was all about letting go of everything. p.7

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“WE ALREADY HAVE everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves-the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds-never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is. (The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 3)

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Patience is not learned in safety.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“I dedicate the merit of the occasion to all beings. This gesture of universal friendship has been likened to a drop of fresh spring water. If we put it on a rock in the sunshine, it will soon evaporate. If we put it in the ocean, however, it will never be lost. Thus the wish is made that we not keep the teachings to ourselves but to use them to benefit others.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“When one of the emperors of China asked Bodhidharma (the Zen master who brought Zen from India to China) what enlightenment was, his answer was, "Lots of space, nothing holy." Meditation is nothing holy. Therefore there's nothing that you think or feel that somehow gets put in the category of "sin." There's nothing that you can think or feel that gets put in the category of "bad." There's nothing that you can think or feel that gets put in the category of "wrong." It's all good juicy stuff-the manure of waking up, the manure of achieving enlightenment, the art of living in the present moment.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not ... maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Meditation practice is not about later, when you get it all together and you're this person you really respect.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Whether we're seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn't an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it's an experience that's expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“An emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that's all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It's a way of acknowledging when we are closing down and of training to open up. When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything-not about winning or losing-but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

When we feel dread, when we feel discomfort of any kind, it can connect us at the heart with all the other people feeling dread and discomfort. We can pause and touch into dread. We can touch bitterness of rejection and the rawness of being slighted. Whether we are at home or in a public spot or caught in a traffic jam or walking into a movie, we can stop and look at the other people there and realize that in pain and in joy they are just like me. Just like me they don't want to feel physical pain or insecurity or rejection. Just like me they want to feel respected and physically comfortable.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“WE can learn to rejoice in even the smallest blessings our life holds. It is easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don't even notice.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“It's as if you were in a spaceship going to the moon, and you looked back at this tiny planet Earth and realized that things were vaster than any mind could conceive and you just couldn't handle it, so you started worrying about what you were going to have for lunch. There you are in outer space with this sense of the world being so vast, and then you bring it all down into this very tiny world of worrying about what's for lunch ... We do this all the time.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed to be visualizing. I couldn't visualize anything. I tried and tried but there was just nothing at all; I felt like a fraud doing the practice because it didn't feel natural to me. ( ... ). So he encouraged me by saying that as long as you have these kinds of doubts, your practice will be good.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We're here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Bodhichitta is our heart-our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We could save ourselves a lot of time by taking this message very seriously right now. Begin the journey without hope of getting ground under your feet. Begin with hopelessness.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“As long as we don't want to be honest and kind with ourselves, then we are always going to be infants. When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably. Finally there's room for genuine inquisitiveness, and we find we have an appetite for what's out there.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are. Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like being so blind that you don't see a huge black raven when it lands in the tree that you're sitting under. We can get so caught up in our own personal pain or worries that we don't notice that the wind has come up or that somebody has put flowers on the diningroom table or that when we walked out in the morning, the flags weren't up, and that when we came back, they were flying.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites-pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame-is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“What I have realized through practicing is that practice isn't about beng the best horse or the good horse or the poor horse or the worst horse.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

As Buddhists, we might say, "My ego causes me so many problems." Then we might think, "Well, then, we're supposed to get rid of it, right? Then there'd be no problem." On the contrary, the idea isn't to get rid of ego but actually to begin to take an interest in ourselves, to investigate and be inquisitive about ourselves.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

You begin where you are, you see what a child you are, and you don't criticize that.

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“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.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“But often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what Chogyam Trungpa called "the genuine heart of sadness." As warriors in training we do our best to hold the person in our heart without any hypocrisy. One thing we can do with a difficult relationship is to place a picture of the person somewhere we will see it often and think, "I wish for your deepest well-being". Or we can write down the person's name, along with the aspiration that they may be safe, may be happy, may live in peace.
Regardless of what specific action we take, our aspiration is to benefit the other person and wish them well.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“Sitting meditation begins with good posture.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“In the teachings of many other contemplative or mystical traditions, the basic view is that people are fundamentally good and healthy. It's as if everyone who has ever been born has the same birthright, which is enormous potential of warm heart and clear mind. The”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“This book stresses repeatedly that it is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“When we reach our limit, if we aspire to know that place fully-which is to say that we aspire to neither indulge nor repress-a hardness in us will dissolve. We will be softened by the sheer force of whatever energy arises-the energy of anger, the energy of disappointment, the energy of fear. When it's not solidified in one direction or another, that very energy pierces us to the heart, and it opens us. This is the discovery of egolessness. It's when all our usual schemes fall apart. Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity and the unconditional goodness of humanity, rather than meeting an obstacle or a punishment.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go - qualities that are innate within us.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“What everyone on this path shares is the inspiration to rest in uncertainty-cheerfully. The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have. Pema's teachings encourage us to experiment with becoming comfortable with uncertainty, then see what happens. What we call uncertainty is actually the open quality of any given moment. When we can be present for this openness-as it is always present for us-we discover that our capacity to love and care for others is limitless.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“We can learn to meet whatever arises with curiosity and not make it such a big deal.”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown

“It's a continual process of opening and surrender, like taking off layer after layer of clothes,”

— Deirdre Blomfield Brown