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1 " Memory is a class of thoughts which takes as its object something already experienced. "
― Joseph Goldstein , The Experience of Insight: A Simple & Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation (Shambhala Dragon Editions)
2 " meditate upon thoughts is simply to be aware, as thoughts arise, that the mind is thinking, without getting involved in the content: not going off on a train of association, not analyzing the thought and why it came, but merely to be aware that at the particular moment “thinking” is happening "
3 " So many problems in the world—political and economic tensions and hostilities—are related to the thought, “This is my nation, my country.” In understanding that the concept is only the product of our own thought processes, we can begin to free ourselves from that attachment. "
4 " We rarely see that “past” and “future” are happening right now. All that there is, is an unfolding of present moments. We have created these concepts to serve a useful purpose, but by taking the ideas to be the reality, by not understanding that they are merely the product of our own thought processes, we find ourselves burdened by worries and regrets about the past and anxieties of anticipation about what has not yet happened. "
5 " Actually, ownership is a thought process independent of the actual relationship that exists between us and objects in the world. Freeing ourselves from attachment to “ownership” frees us from our enslavement to objects. "
6 " In meditation, we free ourselves from attachment to that conceptualization and experience the fundamental unity of the elements which comprise our being. "
7 " When you close your eyes there is the breath, sensations, sounds, thoughts—where is “man” or “woman” except as an idea, a concept? "
8 " From the beginning this “self” does not exist, yet because we’re so firmly attached to the idea of it, we spend much of our lives defending or enlarging or satisfying this imaginary self. Meditation helps us to see its conceptual nature, to see that in reality it does not exist, that it is simply an idea, an extraneous projection onto what’s happening in the moment. "