Just receive life as it is.
Don’t make a problem about it.
Open yourself to the way things are.
Ajahn Sumedho
Content where we are
We all want to be famous people,
and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.
Jiddu Krisnamurti
photo jonathan billinger
The difference between joy and happiness
Joy in the context of spirituality
is not the same as happiness.
Happiness is a feeling that, like all feelings, comes and goes,
while joy is a more fundamental attitude toward life.
This joy doesn’t change your circumstance; it embraces it.
Joy doesn’t make your situation other than it is;
but reveals the greater reality in which it is.
Being aware of the greater reality
always manifests as joy.
The more narrow the attention,
the more focused we are on fleeting moments
of happiness and sadness.
The wider our attention becomes
the more aware we are
of an unending flow of joy.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
photo martin cathrae
Never getting there
I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’
is happiness or not.
All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it,
I see them carried away headlong, serious and obsessed,
in a general rush, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.
And all the while they claim to be
just on the point of attaining happiness….
Chuang-Tzu.
photo emery way
Stilling the voices
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
Mary Oliver, Today
photo yanajin33
Calm in the storm
Some wisdom on the place of meditation and non-doing in overcoming the difficulties of each day, from one of the Desert Fathers, 3rd Century Christian monks in Egypt
Abba Pastor said
“Any challenge that comes to you
can be overcome by silence”
photo itzafineday
Mindfulbalance 