Brenda Shoshanna Quotes

What we pay attention to expands. What we pay attention to we become.

All the insight we will ever need to live well will come from fully being who and where we are.

The facts of our lives, when we are able to know them, will free us from the torment we are in. When we can bear reality thoroughly, suffering is over. Pain may exist, but it is only pain. Suffering is what we add to pain.

Consider for a moment what you pay attention to all day long. What seems important to you, what do you take for granted and hardly attend to at all? Write it down. Do not judge your answers. Be honest and simple. As you keep track all week long, you'll be amazed at what claims your attention, what you give your precious life force to.

The best defense against being hurt is to feel good about yourself and the way a person responds to you says more about them, than about you.

When we are able to receive life's challenges as koans rather than problems, they become interesting and exciting, rather than ponderous and depressing.

From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).

Zen practice asks you not to worry about who you 'should' become. Find out who you are right now.

When we sit, we open our own treasure house. Rather than do this, however, most of us first seek to find the treasures another person can provide. We calculate their value to us. When we approach relationships in this manner, we are coming as beggars, seeing the other as a source of supply. When we can enter a relationship with our treasure house already open, there is no end to the wonders we can find, both within and between ourselves and another.

In a relationship if you are giving and getting nothing back in return, stop giving so much, and spend time being. Give to yourself, be who you are.

What seems good turns bad, what seems bad turns good. It is an endless cycle.

It is a mistake to expect all of our needs to be met by one person or in one relationship. Honor and be grateful for that which you receive. Don't become bitter and spend all your time focusing on that which the person is not able to provide.

When we do not reject our suffering, or add anything to it, pain is simply pain. It is what we add to our pain that turns it into suffering.

Another simple and powerful way to dissolve problems is not to dwell upon the outcome of your actions. Instead, learn to value each action (no matter how small or large), to do it with complete attention. Your joy and satisfaction comes from doing each action with a whole heart and mind. Results and consequences then take care of themselves. When you are not absorbed by concern for outcomes, how much anxiety can you ever have?

Change is the very basis of our life, not to be fought, to be welcomed and tasted, to be seen for the gift it truly is.

All experiences are welcomed and fully digested, not judged good or bad.

We are what we think about. When we stay fixed on one person, thought or situation, we get caught in the grip of self-centered thoughts. The more we give attention to that which is upsetting, the more strength it has to rule our lives.

A time of uncertainty, of not knowing exactly where we're headed, or what kind of choice to make is a Zen moment.

God's guiding hand, the guiding Voice, resting lightly upon us is best felt and heard when we are silent and still.

If one's sense of self is obtained through the eyes of another it is always subject to being lost.

We create a mask to meet the masks of others. Then we wonder why we cannot love, and why we feel so alone.

The sense that my world is stable and stationary, that change will never come and that all will go on continuously as it is, is the nature of all delusion.

Fear of the future and longing for the past are major factors which impede appropriate action.