The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are! Let form be just form, let sound be just sound, let thought be just thought. Why should we bother to attach to them? If we think and feel in this way, then there is detachment and separateness. Our thoughts and feelings will be on one side and our heart will be on the other. Just like oil and water — they are in the same bottle but they are separate.
Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart
If you want to build a ship,
don’t gather people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
Anyone who’s interested in meditation in the first place probably already senses that we are all in a mess, the human mess, and that we have no choice but to clean it up. People who are ill — with heart conditions or cancer or stress-related illnesses or simply greater-than-average unhappiness — or people who have been forced to recognize the inescapable truth that life isn’t easy and smooth, that it inevitably brings problems, that going along with business as usual as if none of this were so is simply not sustainable. Such people have realized that life is always in crisis, not only for them but for everyone. Meditation practice helps us to face this crisis as it really is and nourishes our process for working on it.
Norman Fischer, Taking our Places
Are we using a language in our mind, which is tentative, soft and open or are we using a language which is harsh, strict and compulsive? We will feel differently if in our mind we are saying repeatedly, ‘I must, they must, it has to be, it cannot happen, they should, he never, she always’. The more we use this kind of language internally, the more we will feel tension and rigidity, especially if things do not go according to plan. If instead we were to use more tentative language like ‘I could, he possibly, it might, they sometimes’ we then would encounter reality and circumstances with a more open and creative attitude. We would be open to things going one way, but also happening in a different manner as well. Experience the difference you feel if you think ‘I must go to see this concert’ to ‘I could go to this concert’. With the first version you will fight and strain so that it must happen at all costs. With the second one you are open to it and will rejoice if it happens but if it does not, it will be fine. We can be so stressed by minor things but if we could bring less grasping to our thinking process, we would better evaluate what is essential and not so essential.
Martine Bachelor
We believe that it is difficult to let go, but in truth, it is much more difficult and painful to hold and protect. Reflect upon anything in your life that you grasp hold of – an opinion, an historical resentment, an ambition, or an unfulfilled fantasy. Sense the tightness, fear, and defensiveness that surrounds the grasping. It is a painful, anxious experience of unhappiness. We do not let go in order to make ourselves impoverished or bereft. We let go in order to discover happiness and peace.
Christina Feldman
Mindfulbalance 