What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away. And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
Eugene Gendlin, Focusing, quoted in the new book by the excellent Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
Monks, eight worldly winds spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight winds: Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.
The Buddha, Lokavipatti Sutta
A falling leaf does not hate the wind
Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976, Chinese philosopher, linguist, novelist, and translator.
The meaning of life is just to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Alan Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture
Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years.
Everyone hurries their life on
and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present.
But the one who bestows all of their time on their own needs,
who plans out every day as if it were their last,
neither longs for, nor fears, the next day.
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae [On the Shortness of Life] AD 49
Once a day, take a moment to remember your real life’s work and differentiate it from the games you play in order to achieve it.
Then, commit to playing wholeheartedly…
I’ve mentioned the idea of using the word play to replace the word work. If you have no way to feel playful doing your work, get different work.
This is not to say that play is easy. Real creativity, which is the essence of play, can feel absolutely grueling. But ultimately there is a sense of joy and meaning in having done it. The essential self doesn’t mind hard work. But it will reject meaningless work.
Martha Beck Blog, I Rest my Pace
We all have moments of agitation in our thoughts and feelings. We tend to identify with these as us. We are also always grasping after something that we think will finally complete us. The legendary Bodhidharma points here to a fluid way of working with the mind: See it, and the self, as a process, not a solid, unchanging entity.
Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is always restless. Please give it some calm.”
To which Bodhidharma replied, “OK. Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.”
Huike said, “Although I have tried to find it, I cannot hold it fast”
Bodhidharma then said, “See, there, I have just stilled your mind.”
Case 41 in the Gateless Gate, “Pacifying the Mind”.
Mindfulbalance 