Experiencing the power of faith doesn’t mean we’ve annihilated fear or denied it or overcome it through strenuous effort. It means that when we think we’ve conquered fear only to be once again overcome by it, we can still go on. It means feeling our fear and still remaining in touch with our heart, so that the fear does not define our entire world
Sharon Salzberg, Faith
In our meditation and insightful understanding of the way things are, we see that beauty, refinement, pleasure are impermanent conditions — as well as pain, misery and ugliness. If you really understand that, then you can enjoy and endure whatever happens to you. Actually, much of the lesson in life is learning to endure what we don’t like in ourselves and in the world around us; being able to be patient and kindly, and not make a scene over the imperfections in the sensory experience. We can adapt and endure and accept the changing characteristics of the sensory birth and death cycle by letting go and no longer attaching to it. When we free ourselves from identity with it, we experience our true nature, which is bright, clear, knowing; but is not a personal thing anymore, it is not ’me’ or ‘mine’.
Ajahn Sumedho, Mindfulness, the Path to the Deathless
As strange as it may sound, meditation may reveal that we are happier than we thought we were. We may discover that ancient conditioning rather than present circumstances is causing our dissatisfaction, and that this moment is quite sufficient or even wonderful, and we simply hadn’t noticed.
Wes Necker, Buddha’s Nature
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity
Jung.
There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night.
John O’Donohue
Notice the thought. That’s fine. Notice the anxiety. Notice the fear. Use the meditation to focus your mind…The only thing that is keeping the emotion alive is your own thoughts. You keep churning it over and over again. Your thoughts do not care about you. They only want to perpetuate themselves.
Gary Schneider, Zen for High Schoolers
