What matters in life is not what happens to you,
but what you remember and how you remember it
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Not what happens today
Month: March 2022
Believe
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The nature of reality
Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Phádraig daoibh go léir!
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
The clouds above us come together and disperse;
The breeze in the yard departs and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can keep us from celebrating?
Lu Yu, Chinese tea master, 733 – 804
Everything is practice
As a human being, you have the right to get angry; but as a practitioner, you do not have the right to stop practicing.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The changing nature of everything
Above all, the attitude of Buddhist meditation is one that keeps remembering and focusing on the changing nature of everything. When we witness, listen and relate to sensory experience as change, its power to burn, hold and trap us wanes. There is a sense of dispassion, not through rejection or some other kind of negative attitude to the sensory experience, but just through observing it, bringing the mind fully on to it – as fully as we can. Then the heart grows quiet and still.
Ajahn Sucitto
Brokenness
One does not have to be completely satisfied with everything before one can be content. Similarly, everything does not have to be just as you would like it in your life for you to be grateful.
The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection….I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – mine, yours, ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.
Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness
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