Karen Maezen Miller Quotes

When you can face reality without camouflage, yours is the face of compassion. What a sight for sore eyes!

The world doesn't need another wanderlusting soul seeker. The world needs a homemaker - me - to make my home within it.

We can handle anything when we exchange our worries and fears for alertness and spontaneity, when we focus solely on what is in front of us, and when we leap into the sheer wonder of the unplanned life.

This mind is an amazing thing. It can conjure love from the scent of orange blossoms, peace from a dry breeze, and joy from a patch of grass on a summer day.

True faith is not hard at all. It is soft in its resilience, yielding in its certitude - the vehicle for absolute grace.

Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.

Who was your teacher? He hadn't studied with that teacher; he'd read the books. I didn't know the answer I was looking for when I asked the question, but I do now.
A book may teach, but is not a teacher.
A teacher may find fame, but a teacher is not a celebrity.
A teacher comes from a line of teachers and completes a length of training that he or she freely admits is never complete.
A teacher is rarely found and yet astonishes you with his or her complete availability.
A teacher doesn't ask much of you
not your life, not your loyalty, and not a high fee for a once-in-a-life-time opportunity.
A teacher waits.

May you be tired and afraid
overwhelmed and ready to quit.
Quit!
Start over, over
ten thousand times over
roll out, get up, fall down
break into tears
open in laughter
sing and dance
be silly, be glad.
May you forget most things,
remember everything,
come to know in your bones
with your blood
through your eyes
from your lips
out of earth
deep below, well beyond
you are love.
You are just love.
Amen.

You're putting all your effort into pulling a rope and then blaming the other side for the blister.

On a perfect day in your perfect little world (and it's always perfect) there is breakfast time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time, snack time, dinnertime, bath time, story time, and bedtime. There is time for everything when you are the timekeeper.

Happiness is not a science, an art or an outcome. It can't be qualified, procured or consumed. It's not invented, but comes naturally made from mud, honeysuckle, pitted olives, and doting grand dads ... it's what we are when we are utterly ourselves in unaffected ease.

What you call your life is not yours at all
not yours to plan, manipulate, or control, at least not very often ... In fleeting moments of deep satisfaction and insight, I saw the absolute truth of life: the unbroken line of love that had led to my existence and would lead on through my daughter. My mother's love, her mother's love, her mother's love, and back and back forever ago. Love that is no mere word, love that goes beyond feeling, love that is life itself ... What miracles, what sacrifice, what love! ... Can you imagine this love? Can you anticipate it, fabricate it, measure and evaluate it? No you can't, you can only be love, and your child will release its magnitude within you.

You have to step through the gate, the false barrier of your critical mind, to see all the ways we habitually reject the very place our lives have landed us. And then, we have to stop plotting an escape. That's what practice is for: staying put.

It's not so bad to find yourself free of the effort to overcome your life. It's not so bad.

Buddhism asks big questions about birth and death, cause and effect, emptiness and form, delusion and enlightenment. I just hope you're not actually thinking about any of that stuff, because Buddhism is fundamentally about something that requires no thought.

All practice is the practice of making a turn in a different direction. Toward one thing and away from another; the particulars in any given situation don't matter, because you always know the right way. A different way. With practice, you get better at turning.
This is my practice. It's not anything special you need to learn. It is not some new information you neet to get. It is nothing you haven't heard before. It is just a turn you might not yet have made, or made again, and again, and again. A turn toward intimate engagement with the life you already have.
Fulfillment derives not from lofty achievements, but from ordinary feats. It arrives not once in a lifetime, but every moment of the livelong day.

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.

Quite the narration in your head, even for a moment, and see for yourself that life is life, and not one minute of it is a retelling or a foretelling. Some things happen; some things don't. That's what makes it all worth seeing, no matter where it goes or how it ends. There is no spinmeister steering it all to a forgone conclusion.

When we liberate ourselves from the idea of parenting success, we liberate our children from failure, all without accomplishing a single thing.

Nothing is solid. Everything disappears. In a million, billion ways the world will fail you. How can you bear it?

You can't fill a hole that doesn't exist.

Mine is not the faith of wishful thinking. It's faith with arms and legs, days and nights, eyes and ears.

The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.

I never ask myself if it's worth it, and that's how I know it is.

I am talking about something more than just the gauzy circle of life. Sure, you're older now and one day you're going to die, but before that, you have to *die*. Your child has arrived and the battle has been joined. It is the battle to the death of your ego. The demise of your selfishness and impatience. The end of your idle distractions and carelessness. The decline and fall of Numero Uno. Or so you must pray, because in this contest, you must lose or lose quickly. Pray that you will never bear the shattered consequences of winning when your child's safety, trust, and happiness are the casualties.

Now is the only cure for then.