Know how to be happy

I like this idea of over-borrowing, always demanding more from the present moment.

If you know how to be happy with the wonders of life that are already there for you to enjoy, you don’t need to stress your mind and your body by striving harder and harder, and you don’t need to stress this planet by purchasing more and more stuff. The Earth belongs to our children. We have already borrowed too much from it…..Much of our modern way of life is permeated by mindless over-borrowing. The more we borrow, the more we lose. That’s why it’s critical that we wake up and see we don’t need to do that anymore. What’s already available in the here and now is plenty for us to be nourished, to be happy.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Sunday quote: No preference

Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is.

Jiddu Krisnamurti

Interesting

In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.

John Cage, quoted in Mark Epstein, Going on Being

Untroubled

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.

The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Sunday Quote: Miracle

To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.

Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

All flows through us

The sublime peace of the Tao [is] something we can all experience by . . . coming into accord with how things actually are—what Tibetan Buddhists call the natural state. Rather than trying to build skyscrapers to reach heaven and bridges to cross the raging river of samsara to reach the so-called other shore of nirvana, we could realize that it all flows right through us right now and there’s nowhere to go, nothing to get, and all is perfect as it is. This deep inner knowing has a lot to do with trust and letting be; there is nirvanic peace in things just as they are.

Lama Surya Das in Derek Lin, Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained