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Prayer and contemplation are both exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of conscious thought is restricted and the mind is brought to one conscious area of operation. The results are those you find in any concentrative practice: deep calm, a physiological slowing of the metabolism and a sense of peace and wellbeing

Henepola Gunaratana

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Henepola Gunaratana
Age: 97
Born: 1927
Born: December 7
Bhikkhu
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More quotes by Henepola Gunaratana

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You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option: You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion.
Henepola Gunaratana
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Real peace comes only when you stop chasing it. When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedfom and security are yours.
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You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.
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Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.
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Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions.
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View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.
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Each step along the Buddha's path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life.
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Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.
Henepola Gunaratana
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The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.
Henepola Gunaratana
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But look within and watch the stuff coming up-restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain-just watch it come up and don't get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.
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Whatever attitudes we habitually use toward ourselves, we will use on others, and whatever attitudes we habitually use toward others, we will use on ourselves.
Henepola Gunaratana
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Peace is not a thought, not a concept it is a nonverbal experience.
Henepola Gunaratana
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The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.
Henepola Gunaratana
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[M]orality is not a ritualistic obedience to a code of behavior imposed by an external authority. It is rather a healthy habit pattern that you have consciously and voluntarily chosen to impose upon yourself because you recognize its superiority to your present behavior.
Henepola Gunaratana
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Civilization changes man on the outside. Meditation softens him within, through and through.
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By silencing the mind, we can experience real peace. As long as various kinds of thoughts agitate the brain, we don't experience 100 percent peace.
Henepola Gunaratana
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You can only have bliss if you don't chase it.
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No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.
Henepola Gunaratana
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You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that changes will flow naturally.
Henepola Gunaratana