Mindfulbalance

We often search for happiness by adding things to our lives: more experiences, more possessions, more achievements. But sometimes happiness is found not by adding, but by subtracting. Subtract the constant pressure, the busyness, the noise. Create space through rest. Happiness is like a shy animal; it will not come out if we are constantly crashing through the forest. Sit quietly, rest, and it may appear on its own.

Joseph Emet, Buddha’s Book of Happiness: Teachings for Achieving Lasting Peace, Joy, and Fearlessness

We use pleasant and unpleasant feelings to measure our success or failure. If we experience something pleasant, we think we’ve succeeded. If we experience an unpleasant feeling, we think we’ve failed.

When our minds cling to the nature of experience in a personalized way, we end up running around trying to prop up a sense of a satisfied happy self, or reinventing ourselves as miserable and hopeless.

The practice is to look at things from the lens of our experience and seeing their impermanent, uncertain, changing nature…. they’re arising, they’re ceasing, they’re arising, they’re ceasing.

Ajahn Pasanno , On Becoming and Stopping

There are years that ask questions,

and years that answer them

 Zora Neale Hurston, 1891–1960, American novelist, short-story writer and folklorist, Their Eyes Were Watching God