People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness.
Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
The Dalai Lama
Tolerance
Month: October 2023
Not more, but less
When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves-from other people, relationships, or material goods-or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion.
Completion comes, not from adding another piece to ourselves,
but from surrendering our ideas of perfection
Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective
As fluid as the ocean
A reminder to hold our thoughts, ideas and, even our identity, somewhat lightly.
The Buddha once said in verse:
“Of various elements is this body of Mine composed.
The time of its arising is merely an arising of elements;
The time of its vanishing is merely a vanishing of elements.
As these elements arise, I do not speak of the arising of an ‘I’,
And as these elements vanish, I do not speak of the vanishing of an ‘I’.
Previous instants and succeeding instants are not a series of instants that depend on each other;
Previous elements and succeeding elements are not a series of elements that stand against each other.
To give all of this a name, I call it ‘the meditative state that bears the seal of the Ocean’.“
We need to make a diligent effort to fully explore these words of the Buddha.
Dogen, 1200- 1253, Shobogenzo
Unbidden
Thoughts come up that we don’t plan.
We don’t say “At 9:10, I’ll be filled with self-hatred”
We can forgive ourselves when these painful thoughts arise, unbidden.
Sharon Salzberg, Finding your Way
Sunday Quote: free
If you know a view as a view, you can be free of that view.
If you know a thought as a thought, you can be free of that thought.
Norman Fischer, Beyond Language
Good and bad habits
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten path for ourselves.
I had not lived there a week, before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct.
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Mindfulbalance 