The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
Letting there be room for not knowing
is the most important thing of all.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets.
You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.
You’ll have fish left over…
It is by definition, Christmas, the incarnation.
This old rock planet gets the present for a present on its birthday every day.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
To see the Way with your own eyes,
quit agreeing and disagreeing.
This battle between likes and dislikes – that’s the primal disease of the mind.
Seng–ts’an, 529 – 606, Inscription on Faith in Mind
God has given you one face,
and you make yourselves another.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone should behave. But it is not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.
Ajahn Sumedho
Mindfulbalance 