Stand on the earth, not on your ideas

Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?

Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don’t see the self as self, what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self. Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things.

Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 13

the smaller moments

Applying attention to smaller emotions

or simply focusing on form, sound, or physical sensations –

develops your capacity to look at long-term, overwhelming emotional states.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Aim of Attention

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right now

All I can experience and work with

is what my life is right now.

That’s all I can do.

The rest is the dream of ego.

Charlotte Joko Beck

We could meet

The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face.

When we feel resentment that the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and heaviness.
When we feel resentment that the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and bite.
When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead
When we worry because the wind is shaking the windows, we could meet the wind and hear the sound.


Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves.

There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on for ever.

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Sunday Quote: Deep Life, Not Long Life

An old French sentence says, “God works in moments,”

En peu d’heure Dieu labeure.

We ask for long life,

but it is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works and Days

Thinking is not the only way

Both the poetic and the literal translations have something to provoke reflection

Can you step back from your own mind, and understand all things?

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 10 (Mitchell translation)

[literally Can you comprehend everything without depending on knowing]