If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die.
So let’s go forward and die.
African Proverb
Sunday Quote: Perseverance
Month: November 2022
Simple mindfulness advice
A walk is just as good…
When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having,
just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road,
without a thought on anything but on the ride you are taking.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scientific American, 1896
[or as I saw it written on a wall in Italy…”pedala senza pensare a nient’altro che alla strada che percorri”]
Precious enough
Who needs to reach beyond all this wonder surrounding us….
Who needs to feel they will survive their death, either as a transcendent conscious soul residing in heaven or re-entering nature again and again?
What we are given is precious enough – a moment of awareness.
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
A reminder
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
Alain de Botton, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary
Arrogance
What is wrong with us human beings, and has been wrong since time immemorial, is that without ever stating it in so many words, we believe that we have entered the realm of immortality. We behave as if we are never going to die – an infantile arrogance.
But even more injurious than this sense of immortality is what comes with it : the sense that we can engulf this inconceivable universe with our minds.
Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity
Our highest ambition
All Saints Day in the Christian Calendar
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.
Thomas Merton, Journal, October 2, 1958
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