I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
photo Barney Moss
We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara – the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Ways Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
With no mind, flowers lure the butterfly;
With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
Yet when flowers bloom, the butterfly comes;
When the butterfly comes, the flowers bloom.
Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Buddhist monk, hermit and poet.
We can sometimes feel fragmented in our inner life, sucked into a crisis, pulled in all directions, but…
There is not a “fragment” in all nature,
for every relative fragment of one thing
is a full harmonious unit in itself.
John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
But what is it then that sits in my heart,
that breathes so quietly, and without lungs—
that is here, here in this world, and yet not here?
Mary Oliver
You have placed eternity in our hearts
Ecclesiastes 3:11
[Our] knowing awareness gets lost when we cling to states of mind, because these are always in motion. We get pulled off balance by emotionally powered thoughts that demand that we follow them, fix them, get rid of them or worry about them. So we have to learn to undo the habit of reaching for, adopting or clinging. You can never satisfy a driven mind. A wise person is someone who can give up the ranting of the self to find a more natural tune; they can see the clamouring and the clutching, the fearing and the grasping, are unnecessary and not worth hosting.
Ajahn Sucitto, Parami
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