See what is. Acknowledge it without judging it as right or wrong. See it clearly without judgment and let it go. Come back to the present moment. From now until the moment of your death, you could do this. As a way of becoming more compassionate, as way of becoming less dogmatic, prejudiced, determined to have your own way, absolutely sure that you’re right and the other person is wrong, as a way to develop a sense of humor, to lighten it up, open it up, you could do this.
Pema Chodron
Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface, and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy
Jon Kabat Zinn
These are the things we can contemplate. We can’t control what arises in the mind, but we can reflect on what we are feeling and learn from it rather than simply being caught helplessly in our impulses and habits. Even though there is a lot in life that we can’t change, we can change our attitude towards it. That’s what so much of meditation is really about—changing our attitude from a self-centered, “get rid of this or get more of that” to one of welcoming life as it is. Welcoming the opportunity to eat food that we don’t like. Welcoming wearing three robes on a hot morning. Welcoming discomfort, feeling fed up, wanting to run away. This way of welcoming life reflects a deeper understanding. Life is like this. Sometimes it’s very nice, sometimes it’s horrible, and much of the time it’s neither one way nor the other. Life is like this.
Ajahn Sumedho
A painter or a musician, a composer, when they create a piece of art, they always sign their name. You also. You produce in your little life, the thinking, the speech and the action. If your thinking is the right thinking, that is a good work of art. It bears always your name.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Mindfulness of Anger
The relation be
tween what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Our sense of beauty
and our understanding of the nature of the good life
are intertwined.
Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
