In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, non-intrusively, the way we are present with things in nature. We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: ‘I love looking at this birch’ becomes ‘I am this birch’ and then ‘I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.”
David Richo, When the Past is Present
Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different;
Enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will);
Being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).
James Baraz
Stars and blossoming fruit trees:
Utter permanence and extreme fragility
give an equal sense of eternity.
Simone Weil
photo il conte di luna
We might think of the mind as being like clear, open space. All kinds of things arise there, but the space is not affected….In meditation and in our lives, it is not so important what particular experience arises. What’s important is how we relate to it. By learning to relate well with whatever arises, we open to the full range of human experience, to what the Taoists call “the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows”.
Joseph Goldstein, A Heart Full of Peace
photo chitrapa
What I’ve noticed is that there are two main ways that fear of uncertainty affects us, at least initially. One is that we speed up and the other is that we get very lazy. As I’ve talked with people many of them share their experiences of how a basic level of nervousness causes them to speed about even in their own homes, bouncing from room to room and task to task and never quite finishing anything. People talk about going back and forth between one thing and another, emailing and calling people on the phone. …Lazy is the other way to go. It is the opposite of speed, and yet these two seeming opposites are both about the same thing: avoiding being present with our fear of uncertainty. You procrastinate. You feel unworthy. Laziness has a frozen quality. You spend hour after hour on the computer, not as a form of speediness, but just distracting yourself, trying not to feel what’s underneath what you’re feeling, trying to avoid touching the uncertainty and uneasiness.
Pema Chodron
photo trishna datta
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