More awake

File:Sunrise across River Corribh, Galway, Ireland.png

Every day of your life, every morning of your life, you could ask yourself, “As I go into this day, what is the most important thing? What is the best use of this day?” At my age, it’s kind of scary when I go to bed at night and I look back at the day, and it seems like it passed in the snap of a finger. That was a whole day? What did I do with it? Did I move any closer to being more compassionate, loving, and caring — to being fully awake? Is my mind more open? What did I actually do? I feel how little time there is and how important it is how we spend our time.  What is the best use of each day of our lives? In one very short day, each of us could become more sane, more compassionate, more tender, more in touch with the dream-like quality of reality. Or we could bury all these qualities  and get more in touch with solid mind, retreating more into our own cocoon.

Pema Chodron, Waking up to your World

photo of sun rising over the Corrib river, Galway,  by tom murphy

Be Happy

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One of my meditation teachers used to end each of our interviews … and say to me, “Remember, Sylvia, be happy.”  I actually for a long time thought it was a salutation, like “have a good day” or something that you say just in a routine kind of a way, and it took me a long time to realize that it was an instruction, “Be happy.” Not only that it was an instruction but that it was a wisdom transmission –  that happiness was a possibility. I understand that happiness to mean,  the happiness of a mind that’s alert, that’s awake to the amazing potential of being a person in a life, with a mind that’s opened, that sees everything that’s going on, and realizes what an amazing possibility this is, and with a heart that’s open, the heart that responds naturally as hearts do, in compassion, in connection with friendliness, with love, with consolation when it needs to:  That that’s the happiness of life –  a mind that’s awake, a heart that’s engaged.

Sylvia Boorstein, Stanford Keynote Speech, 2005

photo joe sarembe

Stop chasing after

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De temps en temps,

il est bon de faire une pause dans notre quête du bonheur et juste être heureux.

Now and then

it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness

and just be happy.

Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet, 1880 – 1918

photp ingrid taylar

How we grow

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How did the rose

ever open his heart

and give to this world all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

against its being,

otherwise, we will remain too frightened

Hafiz

photo Amada44

Just dance

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Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right.

Just dance

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life

photo quinn anya

Mind states that pass through

looking at clouds

Many people fail to distinguish between their true nature and their personality traits, particularly their less desirable traits. The fact is you are not the worst characteristics of your personality. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and to fear or hate what seems painful. Discovering how your heart and mind can work together to use these feelings allows you to move beyond them. You may feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of your present life or bound by past traumatic events. Again, this is a failure in perception. They are just mind-states which can be known. They can be seen as impermanent and not belonging to you and, therefore, they do not ultimately define your true nature.

Philip Moffitt