What you help a child to love
can be more important
than what you help him to learn
African Proverb
Inner worth
God has given you one face,
and you make yourselves another.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Inward
Samsara [the ongoing cycle of unsatisfactory experience]
is mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections;
nirvana is mind turned inwardly,
recognizing its nature.
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
Underneath your fears, your original face
Who are you? Never mind all your fears and insecurities or all the things you have or would like to have. Forget that you want to be a better person. I’m not asking who you believe yourself to be, but rather what you experience in those moments when you are not caught up in your wants and fears. What do you rely on to give meaning to your life?
Even if you never consciously grapple with these questions about your true nature, certain circumstances will require you to pay attention. Life delivers you a series of challenges in the form of small and large good fortune, as well as petty and great misfortune. In the struggle to learn how to respond to the resulting joy, pain, and confusion, you are repeatedly challenged to seek and to act from your essence.
Phillip Moffit, The Language of the Soft Heart
Once thoughts are quieted, the Original Face appears. Thoughts can be compared to clouds. When clouds vanish, the moon appears. The moon of suchness is the Original Face. Thoughts are also like the fogging of a mirror. When you wipe away all condensation, a mirror reflects clearly. Quiet your thoughts and behold your Original Face before you were born!
Daito, Zen Master, (1282-1337)
Repeating
I asked the poet Tony Hoagland what he thought about fear. He said fear was the ghost of an experience: we fear the recurrence of a pain we once felt, and in this way fear is like a hangover. The memory of our pain is a pain unto itself, and thus feeds our fear like a foyer with mirrors on both sides.
And then he quoted Auden: “And ghosts must do again/What gives them pain.”
Mary Ruefle, On Fear
Here and now
It is possible to live happily in the here and now.
So many conditions of happiness are available — more than enough for you to be happy right now.
You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Mindfulbalance 