To keep on filling
is not as good as stopping.
Oversharpen a blade,
and the edge will soon lose its keenness.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to lasting calm.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 9
self-care
Category: Be fully present
new ways
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living.
We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
In the second half of life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
How we relate
The Buddha’s first insight was that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory – not because life is flawed,
but because we relate to it in ways that inevitably lead to suffering.
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
Clear
The mind is clear like space
– but we clutter it with ‘shoulds.’
Put down the furniture of your opinions,
and the whole sky is available.
Joan Halifax, Being with Dying
Finding peace
When we stop insisting that life be other than it is, we begin to find peace. Acceptance does not mean approval, passivity, or giving up.
It means facing reality with open eyes and an open heart, letting life teach us what it will.
We mature when we stop trying to make life easy and start working with life as it is.
This is the beginning of real freedom — the freedom to love what is, even when it isn’t what we wanted.
David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
Getting stuck in things
We reduce, concretize, or substantialize experiences or feelings which are., in their very nature, fleeting or evanescent.
In so doing, we define ourselves by our moods and by our thoughts
We do not just let ourselves be happy or sad
For instance, we must be a happy person or a sad one
This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to make “things” out of that which is no thing
Mark Epstein
Mindfulbalance 