Is it possible to let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are? In other words, can you cease looking to conceptual definitions to give you a sense of self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity?
Defining yourself through thoughts is limiting yourself. When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Pablo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
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
The idea of love is not love
The idea of the ocean is neither salt nor sand;
The face of the seal cannot rise from the idea
to stare at you,
to astound your heart
Mary Oliver
Coming, going,
the waterbirds
don’t leave a trace,
don’t follow a path.
Dōgen Zenji, 1200 – 1253, Japanese Buddhist writer, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen, On Non-Dependence of Mind
It is blossom season in Japan and in gardens here. They are often used as a metaphor for human existence – beautiful but short lived – a reminder that life needs to be celebrated yet always contains an element of impermanence.
You ask me why I dwell in these green mountains;
I smile and am silent, for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down the stream and goes into the unknown,
I live in a world apart that is not of men.
Li Po, 701-762, Green Mountain
Mindfulbalance 