I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment
on my life.
David Ignatow, American poet
Month: February 2014
Training the mind
The difference between the mind and the body is that no one is surprised to get winded while running to catch the bus. Nobody gets mad at themselves, saying, “I can’t believe I can’t run 26.2 miles!” However, when we become overwhelmed by longer hours at work, more e-mails, or more parenting duties, we become irritable, moody, and unhappy. It doesn’t occur to us that our mind is out of shape. We put more stress on ourselves because we assume we should just be able to handle it all.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Running with the Mind of Meditation
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Not replacing
The practice of meditation does not involve discontinuing one’s relationship with oneself and looking for a better person or searching for the possibility of reforming oneself and becoming a better person. The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one’s confusion, chaos, aggression and passion – but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view
Chogyam Trungpa, The Path is the Goal
The basic contact
The moment at which a feeling of pleasure or pain begins to turn into a disturbing emotion is the point at which meditative awareness can be most effective. Before we describe or explain feelings to ourselves, how do they feel? What do we actually experience before we name them and are caught by them? Meditative awareness helps us to know and come into contact with that basic aspect of our experience of feeling.
Martine Bachelor
In dreams
In each of us there is another whom we do not know.
He speaks to us in dreams
and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.
C.G. Jung
Not living in our stories
Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not.
Hearing what is can make you wise.
Hearing what is not can drive you mad
Ghalib, Persian Poet, 1797 – 1869
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