Category: Be fully present

Buying happiness

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If we are silly enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became  content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our society unless you are always wanting to grasp what you never have. The Greeks were not as smart as we are. In their primitive way they put Tantalus in hell. [Advertising]…on the contrary, would convince us that Tantalus is in heaven.

Thomas Merton

Begin Again

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To know what you’re going to draw,

you have to begin drawing

Picasso

What are you going through

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Nothing in this human realm is meant to work. So once you can deeply appreciate that-  the mind of compassion grows if you understand that everybody’s up against it.  I remember reading some works of Simone Veil, a French woman who lived in France during the war and she said there’s only one question worth asking anybody and that question is, “What are you going through?”

Leonard Cohen

Softening the heart

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even
a small purple artichoke
boiled
in its own bittered
and darkening
waters
grows tender,
grows tender and sweet

patience, I think,
my species

keep testing the spiny leaves

the spiny heart

Jane Hirshfield, My Species

Pause and stay present

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The propensity to feel sorry for ourselves, the propensity to be jealous, the propensity to get angry — our habitual, all-too-familiar emotional responses are like seeds that we just keep watering and nurturing. But every time we pause and stay present with the underlying energy, we stop reinforcing these propensities and begin to open ourselves to refreshingly new possibilities.

As you respond differently to an old habit, you may start to notice changes. In the past when you got angry, it might have taken you three days to cool down, but if you keep interrupting the angry thoughts, you may get to the point at which it takes only a day to drop the anger. Eventually, only hours or even one and a half minutes. You’re starting to be liberated from suffering

Pema Chodron, Free yourself from the story of You

Storms

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Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, We will have to learn to live with it – just as we have learned to live with storms.

Paulo Coelho.