Our minds are always asking “How can this moment be better?”
What if we tried asking today, “What is already here?” and stop wishing that reality become something else:
A monk asked Yaoshan
What is the essenital truth in all your teaching?
Yaushan replied
Clouds are in the blue sky;
water is in the bottle
Chan master Yaoshan Weiyan , 751–834, found in the Transmission of the Lamp
When power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities
Pope Leo, Magnifica Humanitas
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many.
We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers.
All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity.
And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Mary Oliver, Of the Empire in Red Bird, 2008
Caring for other people, for the earth, for rivers, for dogs, is the essence of holiness.
The Torah does not command us to be angels — it says be people of holiness …
first be a person, then be holy.
God has plenty of angels in the heavens
Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, 1787 – 1859.
A wise person employs the mind like a mirror.
They do not grasp after, they do not welcome;
they respond, but do not retain.
Therefore they can triumph over things without harm to theselves
Chuang-tzu, 4th century BC, Zhuangzi, Chapter 7
The effort to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable.
And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.
Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People who cant stand Positive Thinking
There are two kinds of thoughts that dominate almost all humans: thoughts revolving around our own history and thoughts revolving around our own future. These thoughts are mesmerising, and they all have the same fingerprints: my life.
It’s as though you’re walking through life lugging these two big, heavy, important bags with you – one containing all your thoughts about your history, the other all your thoughts about your future. They’re wonderful, valuable bags. But try putting them down, just for a bit. See if you can greet some part of life more immediately, here and now. And if you’re successful, you can pick the bags back up later. If you want to.
Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be wrong: and Other Wisdoms from Life as a Forest Monk
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