Tibetan monks frequently practice a moment of mindfulness each and every time they walk through a door. Sometimes they do this by remembering to recite a certain verse or mantra as they do so. Try this yourself for a day. Every time you walk through a door, pause, take a moment, breathe in and out. Bring yourself back to the moment. Then cross the threshold and walk on.
Lama Surya Das, Awakening to the Sacred: Creating a Spiritual Life from Scratch
photo joanbanjo
In the Buddhist tradition the ability to be happy is often translated into English as ‘equanimity,’
roughly meaning to be equal to things,
to be large enough for the drama in which we find ourselves.
David Whyte, The Three Marriages
photo oxyman
Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t hold strongly to the self as self, what do we have to fear?
Have faith in the way things are.
Love all things that happen as your self; then you can care for all things.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
photo : julio nohara
Consider all phenomena to be dreams.
Don’t be swayed by outer circumstances.
Be grateful to everyone.
Don’t brood over the faults of others.
Explore the nature of unborn awareness.
At all times simply rely on a joyful mind.
Don’t expect a standing ovation
Atiśa, 980 – 1054, Seven Points for Training the Mind and Heart
photo Ed Yourdon
Contradictions have always existed. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.
Greek figure, c. 510 BC
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved;
it is a reality to be experienced
Jacobus Johannes van der Leeuw Dutch author, 1893 – 1934
photo rennett stowe
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