Happiness is a butterfly
which, when pursued, is always beyond your grasp,
but which, if you sit down quietly,
may light upon you
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stop chasing
Month: June 2025
The painful illusion
Our sense of incompletion comes not from lacking something, but from the stubborn and relentless act of comparing ourselves to others. The flower doesn’t look at its neighbor and think, I should be taller, or redder, or more like a rose. It just unfolds in the sun, moment by moment, wholly itself.
We, however, are caught in the painful illusion that we must be better than or different from who we are to be worthy of love. But the lesson of the flower is clear: There is no other. There is only this – this moment, this self, this blooming.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Travelling
Happiness is not a destination but a manner of traveling.
It’s the willingness to see the gifts in what is, rather than longing for what isn’t.
Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day
Sunday quote: What we aim for
With what can I compare this life of mine?
A boat drifting aimlessly on the water.
Ryōkan, 1758–1831, Zen poet,
trust the process
Alert to the needs of the journey
those on the path of awareness
like swans, glide on,
leaving behind their former resting places
Dhammapada 91
Relaxing into the flow
Everything changes. This is the first law of life. When we resist this truth, we suffer.
But when we relax into the flow of the present – allowing each moment to arise and pass without clinging – we discover a paradoxical stability: the ground of being that never leaves us.
David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change… and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
Mindfulbalance 