If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. ….
Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
All around
All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,
the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of love.
Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge
and then empower himself
with the ability
to make holy what
already was.
St Catherine of Siena (1347–1380),
in Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God:Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
Look within
Now, more than ever, we need to develop our own inner resources:
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Emerson
The right focus
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.
What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.
Thomas Merton
Being thankful
Years ago I had a Buddhist teacher in Thailand who would remind all his students that there was always something to be thankful for. He’d say, “Let’s rise and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we may have learned a little. And if we didn’t learn even a little, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we did get sick, at least we didn’t die. So let us all be thankful”.
Leo Buscaglia, Born for Love: Reflections on Loving.
Changing the mind
If we have to walk across rough and thorny ground, one way of protecting our feet is to cover the whole ground with leather, but this is not very practical. We can achieve the same result in a much simpler way—by covering our feet. Similarly, if we wish to protect ourself from suffering we can either try to change the whole world to make it conform to our wishes, or we can change our mind. Until now we have been trying to change the world, but this clearly has not worked. Now we need to change our mind.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Eight Steps to Happiness
