Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands,
because if we are not grateful,
then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want
to have something else or something more.
Br David Steindl-Rast
We continually move in and out of wholeness and fragmentation, in and out of clarity and confusion, and in and out of a largeness of heart and smallness of mind. When whole and clear and large of heart, we seem to be carried along, part of something larger. When fragmented and confused and small of mind, we seem to be tossed about, lost in ways we don’t quite understand. And so we continually search for tools that will free us to be lifted by life’s currents and not battered by them. One such tool is a frame of mind, an attitude by which we meet the world: it has to do with whether we are giving attention or getting attention. Giving attention steers us back to center, Giving attention is connective. On the other hand, getting attention is a form of drifting from center. If attention comes your way, well, enjoy, but cultivating and seeking it is paddling away from center. Getting attention is deceptively isolating. It ultimately leads to being seen but not held.
Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk
Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars…
and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.
Everything is simply happy.
Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.
Look at the flowers – for no reason.
Osho
Unless you were raised by wolves, you probably heard at least a few of the following as you were growing up: “Don’t do that…. Why don’t you ever listen?… Wipe that look off your face…. You shouldn’t feel that way…. You should have known better…. You should be ashamed of yourself…. I can’t believe you did that…. It serves you right…. What were you thinking of?… The nurses must have dropped you on your head…. I had great hopes for you…. Don’t talk back to me…. Do as you are told…. Don’t you ever think about anyone else?” Somewhere along the line we conclude there is something wrong with us. What else could we conclude? If there were nothing wrong with us, people would not say those things, would they?
Being intelligent creatures, we soon take over the job of punishing ourselves, punishment being the way to improve so that we can be who and how we should be. We learn the self-improvement process as quickly as possible so we can fix ourselves before anyone else notices we need fixing. As a result, most people grow up with an unshakable belief that the primary reason they are “good” is that they punish themselves when they are “bad.” The very thought of not punishing ourselves when we make mistakes, say and do stupid things, feel inappropriate feelings, or act “bad,” makes us nervous: If I don’t punish myself when I do something wrong, what will keep me from doing it again? I might do even worse things! To this I would say that one process does not lead to another. Punishment does not make us good, punishment makes us punishing
Cheri Huber, There is nothing wrong with us
To take an in-breath and touch the conditions of happiness that are available, is something that all of us can do. Because of that we can stop and establish ourselves in the present moment. That is the teaching of living happily in the present moment. Please train yourself to make the present moment, the here and the now, into your true home. That is the only home that we have. That is the only place where we can touch life. Everything we are looking for must be found in the here and the now.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Since the condition that has caused our dis-ease is a fixed, partial view of our experience, we cannot promote healing just by adopting a different view. It might be a better view, it might be a wonderful view, it might be the greatest view of reality in the world, but it will not be healing if it’s just another set of beliefs and attitudes. Instead of building bigger or fancier boxes, we need to develop the antidote to all our partial views of reality: being present with our experience as it is. We could call it beginner’s mind. This is unconditional presence. As Suzuki Roshi says “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few” We have all become experts at being ourselves, and in so doing we have lost our ability to be present with our experience in a fresh, open-minded way.
John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening
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