Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness,
be it material or psychological.
Happiness comes from letting go
Mark Epstein
From letting go
Being, not doing
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being, ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind, and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it, all disappeared – myself, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained, and unfathomable silence.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 –1981 indian non dualist teacher
renewable
You are impermanent and renewable, like your breath, like your steps. You are not something permanent experiencing something impermanent. You are something impermanent experiencing something impermanent.
If happiness can be renewed, so can you, because you in the next moment is a renewal of you in this moment. It’s wonderful to know that happiness lasts only as long as one in-breath or one step, because we know we can renew our happiness in another breath or another step.
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Art of Power
Sunday Quote: Oneness
Close your eyes. Find green mountains and pure water within your heart. Silently drinking, feel these become part of you.
When you hold the green tea in the bowl in your hands
The self and the natural world cease to be separate.
Sen Genshitsu, 1923 – 2025, \Grand master of the Urasenke tea tradition
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the hearts of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe.
Black Elk Speaks , recorded early 20th Century
As the leaves return
The Spring Equinox: transformation is often quiet, patient, and without spectacle
Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them.
But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.
Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
Hermann Hesse, Trees, Reflections and Poems
friendship with life
I keep yearning for this friendship with life, which is the deeper home I am returned to when I put down all I carry…
Our friendship with life is the ever‑present sanctuary of being that waits beneath our struggles.
Mark Nepo, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life
Mindfulbalance 