The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is.
When the mind is perfectly clear, “what is” is what we want.
Byron Katie
Why we suffer
Month: April 2025
it is serene
Sometimes the wisest thing to do is not interfere. The universe is already in harmony
Heaven does nothing (wú wéi), yet it is serene; Earth does nothing, yet it is at peace.
By their non-action, the ten thousand things are transformed…
A wise person imitates this: lets the world be as it is, and all things arrange themselves.
Chuang Tzu, The Way of Heaven (Tiān Dào) Chapter 13
Back to work
Much misery arises from the fantasy that things might be otherwise.
Half the anxiety of having “too much to do” stems from not seeing that there will always be too much to do – so you can stop struggling to get on top of it all. And as the writer Sam Harris notes, we make various everyday problems worse with our implicit indignation that we must deal with them at all – as if we imagined we might one day get to live a problem-free life.
Christian Bobin, a French poet, describes an epiphany: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought, an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.”
There’s much that people shouldn’t have to cope with, and that we should fight. But coping per se? That’s just life.
Oliver Burkeman, Too many problems? Maybe coping isn’t the answer
a mystery to be lived
When we forget to rest, we forget who we are – we forget the fragile, miraculous gift of life we have been given. We hurry through our days, fuelled by fear and the false assumption that if we do not keep working, we will lose our place, fall behind, no longer be needed. But in this hurry, we are no longer present for our lives. We miss the quiet moments of connection, the whispers of our own hearts, the fleeting beauty of a world that thrives not on efficiency but on attention, on care.
When we stop – even for a moment – we remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. We remember that our worth is not measured by what we produce but by the depth of our presence, the courage of our compassion, the willingness to simply be with what is.
Without rest, we lose sight of the sacred. We forget that every breath is a borrowed gift, that every moment is a fragile thread in a vast and shimmering web. We begin to believe that we are indispensable, that the world cannot turn without our effort. Our work is not to keep the world turning but to love the world as it turns – to tend it, bless it, and, when the time comes, to let it go.
Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
Sunday Quote: Surrounded by light
Throughout my whole life, during every minute of it
the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes
until it has come to surround me,
entirely lit up from within
Teilhard de Chardin
Swim through the fires
You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it’s the same old story –
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean, for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
Mary Oliver, Dogfish
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