Cloudscape

When you are too distracted by thoughts during meditation while being still, try to meditate more while moving, for instance, in yoga, tai chi, dancing, walking, exercise, work, or another activity. If you are too distracted by thoughts during active meditation, try a more passive meditation, like insight meditation, mantric meditation, prayer or hypnosis.

Since meditation is merely mindful experience, meditation can be both active or passive. There must be a balance between active and passive meditation, and if this balance is not respected, then the meditation may cease to be effective or even become harmful. People have slipped into psychosis from too much passive and too little active meditation. On the other hand, too much active and too little passive meditation will only lead to an obsessive concentration.

In any case, however it is very important that any activity during meditation can be more or less automatized, that is to say, that it can happen without much thought, as it is not concentration, but experience, that matters in meditation. It is impossible to experience if one is forced to concentrate on thought.

People who have too little yang might focus more on active meditation, lest they only lose focus in passive meditation. People who have too little yin might instead focus more on passive meditation.

To be mindful of every experience can uplift one to such state of bliss that, ironically, there is soon the danger that one becomes attached to it, which, once you are no longer in a state of mindfulness, causes negative emotions which prevent us from becoming mindful again. In order not to become attached to the state of being mindful of your experiences of every moment, try to see the transience of every moment, which, after all, lasts only for a moment before it is replaced with the next.

Do not regret when you have allowed an experience to pass you by without you having thankfully enjoyed it, for every experience lasts only an infinitely short time. It does not matter to have lost it, for in doing so, you have lost nearly nothing. In the awareness that every moment fades after an infinitely short time, you may better be able to detach from it.

Whether you were mindful or not at some time in the past does not change your chance of being mindful now, for if at a given moment you wish to be mindful merely for the experience of mindfulness at this moment, and not for its effect on long term, then you certainly will be at that given moment. You may no longer be so the next moment, but that does not matter, for if you do not, it is because you no longer wish to be mindful for that moment, and that, at most, you wish to be mindful merely for the long-term effect of it.

If you try to be mindful but fail, it is because you have forgotten why you want to be mindful. At this point, you no longer truly want to mindful to experience, but merely to be in a state you can call mindful.

Love, in its earliest form, still as a germ, usually inevitably comes with attachment, and so fear, and ultimately hatred for anything that threatens that which we are attached to, and these remain until our love has become perfected. Usually, it is only if our love grows steadily, so that it grows already being close to perfection, it does not cause attachment. Attachment arises when our love grows faster than we can deal with.

Perhaps we can so see the evil within us, in the form of fear and hate, as a good sign. It means that we are growing, and that we are growing fast. That we hate means that we love, and that we love so much that we are prepared to make the sacrifice of suffering for it. When we make this sacrifice, we must bear it, however, and not impose it upon others; it is our own burden. Others did not choose to share in it.

It is, in fact, easy to get rid of all suffering, but only if one gives up one's love. Love, once found, however, is so strong that one rarely finds the force to dispose of it again, unless one has descended into extreme tendencies of self-destruction, such as drug addiction.

Life is as hard as you are willing to make it. Life will never be easy unless you make it so. Remember this when you are suffering. It is the cross you bear to love. You can always be freed of it if you give up that love, and stop caring about anything in unfeeling emptiness. To suffer, until you are perfected, is your own choice.

In absolutely everything you do, be, intensely, mindfully, wholeheartedly creative, even if what you are doing at a given moment is no more than enjoying, for even in the way one enjoys one can be thusly creative. Without really needing to achieve anything, let everything you do every moment be as beautiful as possible, as though it were a work of art — not only in your actions but also your experience. In this way, one may grow through every moment, and every moment will contribute to one's constant growth. In this way, one can both experience and improve at the same time, at all times.

Conceive of all reality as impossible, and it will stand out in all the clearer reality. Say to yourself at everything you perceive that for all the mysteries of its wonders, it simply cannot possibly exist — when this thought then collides with the undeniable fact of its existence, it will stare you in the face and defiantly stand out in all the sharper contrast.

Love in the form of craving or fear is worthless; true love is love that is purified of these. Craving is formed by male, yang energy that stands alone, fear by female, yin energy that stands alone; only when the two are combined can love be achieved.

Let life and all of life be your lover, and cherish all beauty it brings.

Suffering is the only thing that does not cause growth, yet that which causes the suffering often causes most growth. To grow, one must overcome suffering.

Love for every moment — it is infinitely simple, yet it and it alone can solve all your problems. Not just a mere awareness of the present, but loving awareness of the present, for awareness is worth little otherwise. Imprint this as firmly as you can in your mind, and live for it in everything you do. Don't let it remain a mere concept at the back of your head, but let it absorb your entire being, for everything in life depends on it. Love can be seen as a positive or creative awareness; without it, no life — no consciousness — could exist or grow.
Know, however, that love must be powerful as well as gentle, lest you forget to fend for yourself. Even in seeking love for all things, do not neglect to rid yourself of harmful influences; but do even this with love.

Indifference and craving are the two things we must avoid. They are two extremes, and balanced between the two is love, which neither craves nor is indifferent. It accepts and yet not resigns, cherishes and yet does not desire.
Craving can be in the form of desire, or in the form of anger; the craving to add something, or the craving to remove something. Yet both in the end are forms of destructivity.
Many people who seek enlightenment focus on reducing craving, but do not love, and in so doing become indifferent; enlightenment, however, is unconditional love. In its perfect sense, it is love for all things in the universe, which is a state of divinity. In apathy one will find enlightenment no more than in desire. We should not merely seek to avoid pain, but also seek love.
And yet, at the same time, we should not crave even for enlightenment. It is very difficult.