The important thing is not
To imagine one ought
Have something to say,
A raison d’etre, a plot for the play.
The only true teaching
Subsists in watching
Things moving or just colour
Without comment from the scholar.
To look on is enough
In the business of love.
Paddy Kavanagh, Is
It’s often said that consumer society surrounds us with things and encourages us to pay too much attention to things, but in a way I think that’s also misleading. We live in a world that seems to be extremely unstable, to consist of fleeting images. A world that increasingly, thanks in part, I think, to the technology of mass communications, seems to acquire a kind of hallucinatory character. A kind of fantastic world of images, as opposed to a world of solid objects that can be expected to outlast one’s own lifetime. What has waned, perhaps, is the sense of living in a world that existed before one’s self and will outlast one’s self.
Christopher Lasch, Beating the retreat into private life
Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. Regardless of our internal weather- our thoughts, emotions and perceptions- our breathing is always with us like a faithful friend. Whenever we feel carried away, or sunken in a deep emotion, or scattered in worries and projects, we return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind. We feel the flow of air coming in and going out of our nose. We feel how light and natural, how calm and peaceful our breathing functions. At any time, we can return to this peaceful source of life.
Thich Nhat Hahn
If we become addicted to the externals our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of your inner world. This wholesomeness is natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.
John O’Donohue, Anam Chara.
Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.
Osho, A Sudden clash of Thunder
Before one’s individual ability-to-be, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility. Heidegger, Being and TimeThere are two things, to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It’s like a person sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not have to do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Mindfulbalance 