Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.”
In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
Erich Fromm
Category: Make the most of life
Real Happiness
Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions. While ordinary pleasures are produced by contact with pleasant objects and end when that contact is broken, sukha – lasting well-being – is felt so long as we remain in harmony with our inner nature.
Matthieu Ricard, Happiness
Visualizing our day
What do you visualize before you start work? Do you imagine yourself managing the day successfully and calmly? Or do you anticipate all the stressful things that might come up an d how overwhelmed you’ll feel? Many of us tend to ruminate or catastrophize about the negative events we expect to happen at work. Maybe you worry about dealing with irate customers, dread making a phone call, or cringe at the prospect of hurting your back again. Regardless of whether or not these scenarios may happen or not, we often don’t imagine ourselves handling them very well. When we worry, we are prone to focus on how bad something will be, without doing any concrete problem solving or realizing that life will continue, even if this anticipated disaster occurs. Before work, rather than worry about the coming day…visualize in a positive way what will happen today. Imagine yourself having a nice day. If you’re likely to encounter obstacles or setbacks, visualize managing them well. Research shows that this kind of mental rehearsal improves later performance.
Jonathan S. Kaplan, Urban Mindfulness
Finding our confidence within
When we are well with ourselves, then whatever happens, it really doesn’t matter, because we have equilibrium and stability. We don’t feel any lack of confidence.
If not, we’re always on edge, waiting to see how someone reacts to us, what people say to us or think about us. Our confidence hangs on what people tell us about how we are, how we look, how we behave.
When we are really in touch with ourselves, we know ourselves beyond what others may tell us. So these three qualities – a good heart, stability, and spaciousness – these are really what you could call basic human virtues.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Seeing how the mind adds on..
Someone calls you an idiot….Then you start thinking “How can they call me an idiot? They’ve got no right to call me an idiot! How rude to call me an idiot! I’ll get them back for calling me an idiot” And you suddenly realise that you have let them call you an idiot another four times. Every time you remember what they said, you allow them to call you an idiot once again. Therein lies the problem.
If someone calls you an idiot, and you immediately let go, therein lies the solution.
Why allow other people control your inner happiness?
Ajahn Brahm, Who Ordered this Truckload of Dung?
A basic sense of groundlessness
Some reflections on the basic human condition – similar to the idea of groundlessness in Pema Chodron this morning – this time in a commentary on a phrase from Karl Rahner, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the last century. Learning to sit with this is the basic work of meditation. Running away from it, or taking it to mean that something is wrong with us is at the root of most of our problems.
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,we eventually learn that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. Karl Rahner
What does it mean to be tormented by “insufficiency of everything attainable?” How are we tortured by what we cannot have? We all experience this daily. In fact, for all but a few privileged, peaceful times, this torment is like an undertow to everything we experience; beauty makes us restless when it should bring us peace, the love we experience with our spouse does not fulfill our longings, the relationships we have within our families seem too petty and too domestic to be fulfilling, our job is hopelessly inadequate to the dreams we have for ourselves, the place we live in seems boring and lifeless in comparison to other places, and we are too restless to sit peacefully at our own tables, sleep peacefully in our own beds, and be at ease within our own skins. We are tormented by the insufficiency of everything attainable when our lives are too small for us and we live in them in such a way that we are always waiting, waiting for something or somebody to come along and change things so that our lives , as we imagine them, might begin. ….. To be tormented with restlessness is to be human.
Ron Rolheiser
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