Stories of Kindness from Around the World

Reposted from: Heart Advice - Weekly Quotes from Pema Chodron:

October 17, 2018

Your State of Mind Matters
One session of meditation shows you that thoughts and emotions just come and go, and come and go, and come and go. The other day I was meditating and got caught in a thought, and then I had a thought about the thought: “How many thoughts have I had in my life, and where did they all go? I can’t even remember this one that I was just starting to think about.” That might be an age thing, but nevertheless, thoughts are slippery, and there’s so many of them. Yet we really fixate on them, and they become very serious. They cause us to worry, and get in conflict, and grasp, and get jealous, and all these other states of mind.

My children met the Sixteenth Karmapa when they were teenagers, and I asked him if he’d say something to them. I said to him, “The children are not Buddhists, so is there something you could say to them with that in mind?” He just looked right at these young teenagers and said, “You are going to die. And you’re not going to take anything with you except your state of mind.” You die, but your state of mind continues. So how we work with our thoughts right now really matters.

Excerpted from:
This Sacred Journey
An Interactive Online Retreat on Living Purposefully and Dying Fearlessly
Taught by Pema Chödrön