View all problems as challenges.
Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow.
Don’t run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence.
You have a problem? Great.
More grist for the mill.
Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
Just listen to whatever surrounds you. Sound is a good object of meditation because we generally do not try to control it as much as we do other things. People often have a more difficult time settling into their bodies than they do paying attention to the sounds that appear naturally. Just listen and try to let whatever sounds are around you pass through you.
The fundamental purpose of meditation is not to create a comfortable hiding place for oneself; it is to acquaint the mind, one a moment-to-moment basis, with impermanence….When the mind is settled, the underlying ephemeral nature of things can be more clearly perceived. Resistance diminishes, the flight to past and future recedes, and the sense that it might be possible to respond consciously rather than react blindly to events begins to emerge.
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
Finally calm again after some days of wind and rain..
Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.
It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.
Mark Twain, Autobiography
Continuing with a sequence of Mary Oliver poems for autumn. A lot of wind and rain here yesterday and overnight. Plenty of mud…
Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.
It’s what I sense in the mud and the roots of the
trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with
its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and
makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some
spirit, some small god, who abides there.
If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously.
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.
Forgive me.
Mary Oliver, Forgive me
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. I can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith
Drink you tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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