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When once clear awareness and comprehension have been firmly established in a limited but vital sector of the mind’s expanse, the light will gradually and naturally spread, and will reach even distant and obscure corners of the mind’s realm which hitherto had been inaccessible. This will mainly be due to the fact that the instrument of that search for knowledge will have undergone a radical change: the searching mind itself will have gained in lucidity and penetrative strength.

— Nyanaponika Thera The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965)

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More quotes by Nyanaponika Thera

Painful feeling is suffering in itself; pleasant feeling brings suffering through its transiency and its unsatisfying and unsatisfactory nature.

The Vision of Dhamma (1994)

Mindfulness, though so highly praised and capable of such great achievements, is not at all a “mystical” state, beyond the ken and reach of the average person. It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965)

A look into long-neglected quarters of the mind will come as a wholesome shock to the observer. It will convince him of the urgent need for methodical mental culture.

The Vision of Dhamma (1994)

Attempts at eliminating the mind’s main defilements—greed, hate and delusion—must fail as long as these defilements find refuge and support in the uncontrolled dim regions of the mind.

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The relatively small sector of the mind that stands in the intense light of purposeful will and thought is not a reliable standard of the inner strength and lucidity of consciousness in its totality.

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