Right now, can you make an unconditional relationship with yourself? Just the height you are, the weight you are, with the intelligence that you have, and your current burden of pain? Can you enter into an unconditional relationship with that?
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
Real practice is just being here right now
and not adding anything to this.
Charlotte Joko Beck
If there was to be a useful inscription to put on a medallion around your neck, it would be: ‘This is the way it is’.
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up.
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, No Excuses
Another poem by Mary Oliver, about a flower that blooms in Springtime. It is a lovely affirmation of love for life, and the willingness to open and stand firm in one’s own purpose. To share with others, and to shine.
All my life, so far,
I have loved more than one thing,
including the mossy hooves of dreams, including’
the spongy litter under the tall trees.
In spring, the moccasin flowers
reach for the crackling lick of the sun
and burn down. Sometimes,
in the shadows, I see the hazy eyes,
the lamb-lips
of oblivion, its deep drowse,
and I can imagine a new nothing
in the universe,
the matted leaves splitting
open, revealing the black planks
of the stairs.
But all my life – sofar –
I have loved best how the flowers rise
and open, how
the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fore of the world
and stand there shining and willing – the one
thing they can do before they shuffle forward into the floor of darkness, they become the trees.
Mindfulbalance 