And this was written before mobile phones….
The world is full of people
who have stopped listening to themselves
Joseph Campbell
Category: Be fully present
Saturday : Unplug
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes,
including you.
Anne Lamott
Content
There is great happiness
in not wanting,
in not being something,
in not going anywhere.
J. Krisnamurti. 1895 – 1986
Take each moment as it comes
Drinking tea, eating rice,
I pass my time as it comes;
Looking down at the stream,
Looking up at the mountains,
How serene and relaxed I feel indeed!
Ch’an master Nan-ch’üan P’u-yüan, c. 749 – c. 835
Allowing the waves
In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing – joy, anger, boredom, lust – but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been. The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The noise of the mind
Often we’re cast about by the noise of the world and the noise in our heads. Often we’re mesmerized by the stunning cacophony that masks itself as excitement. And though there’s much to be gained for being in the world, we can’t make sense of it till we stop the noise, till we go below the noise, till we go below the habit of our own thoughts. As a whale or dolphin must break surface, only to dive back down, only to break surface again, each of us must break surface into the noise of the world, only to rest our way back into the depth of stillness, where we can know ourselves and life more deeply, until we have to break surface again…For the noise of the mind never dies. It can only be put in perspective, quieted until we can hear the more ancient voices that give us life. At every turn, we need to stop the noise, our own and everyone else’s, not to retreat from the world but to live more fully in it.
Mark Nepo, Stopping the Noise
Mindfulbalance 