Being kind is a simple practice, but it is also a transforming practice,
because as we continue, the conceptual boundary between “us” and “them” begins to melt
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Everyone should be born into this world happy and loving everything. But in truth it rarely works that way. For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it. Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!
And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes almost forgetting how wondrous the world is and how miraculously kind some people can be? And have you too decided that probably nothing important is ever easy? Not, say, for the first sixty years.
Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more, and some days I feel I have wings.
Mary Oliver, Halleluiah.
La joie réside au plus intime de l’âme; on peut aussi bien la posséder dans une obscure prison que dans un palais.
(Joy dwells in the deepest part of the soul; one can have it in an obscure prison just as much as in a palace)
St Therese of Lisieux
photo of the former prison in Annecy by Emmanuel Boutet
It is easy enough to see that all through our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites
which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
photo: pjposullivan
In my experience, cultivating … patience and persistence is essential for developing a sustainable meditation practice and for making change in your life. Furthermore, the two go hand-in-hand.
Patience is the ability to abide with things the way they are. It allows you to tolerate failure, disappointment, defeat, unpleasantness, and confusion without giving up — both on the meditation cushion and in life. Persistence is the capacity of energetic resolve—the determination to hold steady to your intentions. Persistence brings into play the essential energy for directing your attention to what needs to be done right now. Deliberately placing attention on patience gives you the energy to cultivate patience; steady attention on being persistent will yield the energy to nurture new habits of mind.
Phillip Mofitt, The Dance of Patience and Persistence
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