Top 68 Sylvia Boorstein Quotes
#1. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control.
Sylvia Boorstein
#2. I want to feel deeply, and whenever I am brokenhearted I emerge more compassionate. I think I allow myself to be brokenhearted more easily, knowing I won't be irrevocably shattered [p. 59]
Sylvia Boorstein
#3. We don't get a choice about what hand we are dealt in this life.
Sylvia Boorstein
#4. I am thankful that thus far today I have not had any unkind thoughts or said any harsh words or done anything that I regret. However, now I need to get out of bed and so things may become more difficult.
Sylvia Boorstein
#5. Some of my most precious moments of insight have been those in which I have seen clearly that gratitude is the only possible response." (Sylvia Boorstein, from "You Don't Look Buddhist")
Sylvia Boorstein
#6. Steadfast benevolence, sustained by the wisdom that anything other than benevolence is painful, protects the mind from all afflictions.
Sylvia Boorstein
#7. Ultimately ... it's not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose.
Sylvia Boorstein
#8. Mindfulness, the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience, is at the heart of what the Buddha taught.
Sylvia Boorstein
#9. Concentration and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom. No external action needs to happen.
Sylvia Boorstein
#11. The responses of friendliness, compassion, and appreciation that I felt ...
all situational permutations of basic goodwill
depended on my mind's being relaxed and alert enough to notice both what was happening around me and what was happening as my internal response. [p.50]
Sylvia Boorstein
#12. The mind is like tofu. It tastes like whatever you marinate it in.
Sylvia Boorstein
#13. Being trapped by fear is a form of delusion. Either I can do something or I can't. If I truly can't ... I don't do it. If I truly can, and it wold be a wholesome thing to do, I push myself [p. 39].
Sylvia Boorstein
#14. Suffering is the demand that experience be different from what it is.
Sylvia Boorstein
#15. Every single act we do has the potential of causing pain, and every single thing we do has consequences that echo way beyond what we can imagine. It doesn't mean we shouldn't act. It means we should act carefully. Everything matters [p. 41].
Sylvia Boorstein
#16. I think they paid attention to their lives and became wise. For those of us who don't arrive at wisdom naturally, meditation is one way to get there through practice.
Sylvia Boorstein
#17. Everybody manages one way or another; everyone who is alive and reading this book has managed.
Sylvia Boorstein
#19. It is possible to cultivate a mind so spacious that it can be passionate and awake and responsive and involved and care about things, and noty struggle [p. 23]
Sylvia Boorstein
#20. They were struggling and often in quite a lot of pain and concern, but still, they were all right. I thought to myself as I looked around, 'What we're all doing is we're all managing gracefully.' [p.5]
Sylvia Boorstein
#21. If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.
Sylvia Boorstein
#22. Hatred will never cease by hatred, Only love will erase hatred, This is the eternal law.
Sylvia Boorstein
#23. The next-to-last sentence that the Buddha is reported to have spoken as he was dying, before his final sentence of encouragement to his community, was Transient are all conditioned things.
Sylvia Boorstein
#24. Fear doesn't frighten me as much as it used to. I know it's from clinging, and I know it will pass [p. 29].
Sylvia Boorstein
#25. Clearly the path of mitzvot is a form of meditation. The intention to act impeccably requires complete dedication and unwavering attention. I was also impressed with LUzzato's insistence that mitzvot practice is joyful.
Sylvia Boorstein
#26. Pain is inevitable; lives come with pain. Suffering is not inevitable. If suffering is what happens when we struggle with our experience because of our inability to accept it, then suffering is an optional extra [p. 19].
Sylvia Boorstein
#27. Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What's happening right now and what's coming up in me in response to what's happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.
Sylvia Boorstein
#28. The delicacy, the impermanence, the emptiness of mind states. Just like the weather, they blow in and out. Good mood. Bad mood. Tranquil mood. Frazzled mood [p. 105].
Sylvia Boorstein
#31. Essentially, he taught that it doesn't make sense to upset ourselves about what is beyond our control. We don't get a choice about what hand we are dealt in this life. The only choice we have is our attitude about the cards we hold and the finesse with which we play our hand.
Sylvia Boorstein
#32. People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives-materialism and consumerism-doesn't work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart. And an unhappy world.
Sylvia Boorstein
#33. Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you've had a rough day.
Sylvia Boorstein
#34. You are in pain. Relax. Take a breath. Let's pay attention to what is happening. Then we'll figure out what to do. [p. 10]
Sylvia Boorstein
#35. Change and loss and sadness and grief are the shared lot of all human beings ... we are all making our way from one end of life to the other hoping
for whatever intervals of time we can manage it
to feel safe and content and strong and at ease. [p.40]
Sylvia Boorstein
#36. Everything is always changing.
"There is a cause-and-effect lawfulness that governs all unfolding experience.
"What I do matters, but I am not in charge. Suffering results from struggling with what is beyond my control. [pp. 27-28]
Sylvia Boorstein
#37. I'd say, "But I'm not happy." And she'd say, "Where is it written that you're supposed to be happy all the time?
Sylvia Boorstein
#39. The prohibition of L'shon Hara is the Jewish equivalent of the Buddhist practice of Right Speech.
Sylvia Boorstein
#40. Buddha also said that the Dharma, like a bird, needs two wings to fly, and that the wing that balances Wisdom is compassion.
Sylvia Boorstein
#41. If I can't see around my personal story, I'll have no way to see sit in context: This is one event in a life of events. It is whatever it is, but it is temporal. The pain is terrible, but it won't last. I can manage it. or this joy is incredible, but it won't last. Celebrate it now! [pp. 104-105]
Sylvia Boorstein
#42. Dedication to goodness-dedication in response to an inner moral mandate rather than external restraint-was both the antidote to the pain and the source of great happiness.
Sylvia Boorstein
#46. The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.
Sylvia Boorstein
#47. Perhaps ... these days of less sunlight are opportunities for more contemplative time, more looking deeply to see what can only be seen in the dark.
Sylvia Boorstein
#48. Here is the instruction: Only connect. Wherever you are, right now, pay attention. Forever.
Sylvia Boorstein
#49. If you take a deep breath and look around, 'Look what's happening to me!' can become 'Look what's happening!' And what's happening? The incredible drama of life is happening. And we're in it!
Sylvia Boorstein
#50. Becoming aware of fragility, of temporality, of the fact that we will surely all be lost to one another, sooner or later, mandates a clear imperative to be totally kind and loving to each other always [p.119].
Sylvia Boorstein
#52. I love the phrase 'I am not afraid!' Maybe it's the best phrase we can say, other than 'I have everything I need.' Maybe they are the same. [p. 14]
Sylvia Boorstein
#53. All losses are sad. The end of an important relationship is also a death. When people fall out of love with each other, or when what seemed like a solid friendship falls into ruin, the hope for a shared future
a hope that provided a context and a purpose to life
is gone. [p. 149]
Sylvia Boorstein
#54. Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
It isn't more complicated that that.
It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is,
without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
Sylvia Boorstein
#55. Effort, concentration, and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom NO external action needs to happen. [p. 17]
Sylvia Boorstein
#56. Safely connected to my life, and reassured of my essential goodness, I feel at ease, at home, really in the most sublime of homes. [p. 58]
Sylvia Boorstein
#58. I would not ask you to do this practice, to undertake this path of liberation from the habits of suffering mind, unless it were a feasible path.
Sylvia Boorstein
#59. May I feel contented and safe.
May I feel protected and pleased.
May my physical body support me with strength.
May my life unfold smoothly with ease. [p. 71]
Sylvia Boorstein
#60. I am more able to recognize when my mind has gotten itself into trouble and increasingly eager to mobilize the energy to rescue it. Concentration and mindfulness, as remedies to confusion, are either self-activating ... or at least reasonably available remedies to confusion. [pp. 17-18]
Sylvia Boorstein
#61. Life is difficult and painful, just by its very nature, not because we're doing it wrong [pp. 17-18].
Sylvia Boorstein
#62. Right Understanding means feeling terrible, remembering pain is finite, and taking some solace from that remembering. And, when things are pleasant, even splendidly pleasant, remembering impermanence doesn't diminish the experience--it enhances it [p. 33]
Sylvia Boorstein
#63. The voice of Thich Nhat Hanh-friendly, patient, steadfast, confident, contemporary, and often witty-seems, to me, an intermediary big brother talking directly to me on every page saying, 'Look! It's right there in you,' the very wisdom that leads to compassion.
Sylvia Boorstein
#64. We are all dangling in mid-process between what already happened (which is just a memory) and what might happen (which is just an idea). Now is the only time anything happens. When we are awake in our lives, we know what's happening. When we're asleep, we don't see what's right in front of us.
Sylvia Boorstein
#65. The Buddha's criteria for Wise Speech include - in addition to the obvious expectation that speech be truthful - that it be timely, gentle, motivated by kindness, and helpful.
Sylvia Boorstein
#66. Sometimes I think the only thing worth saying is I love you.
Sylvia Boorstein
#67. Speech that compliments is, by definition, free from derision, which clouds the mind with enemies and makes it tense. Kind speech makes the mind feel safe and also glad. [p.74]
Sylvia Boorstein
#68. Freedom of choice is possible. Life is going to unfold however it does: pleasant or unpleasant, disappointing or thrilling, expected or unexpected, all of the above! What a relief it would be to know that whatever wave comes along, we can ride it out with grace [p. 35].
Sylvia Boorstein
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