The difference between misery and happiness
depends on what we do with our attention
Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness
Tag: Awareness
…is direct knowing
The years to come — this is a promise — will grant you ample time
to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.
But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
Mary Oliver, Terns
Trust in awareness
We really have to determine to recognize and open to that which is emotionally challenging, that which is very powerful, overwhelming, frightening or threatening. Yet through the confidence of awareness, we begin to observe how these difficult situations affect the mind, the heart. What is the feeling? It’s not right or wrong. A feeling is what it is, and only we can know it. If we trust our awareness, we know it’s like this. We don’t need to have a word for it or define it in any way, because it is what it is. This is not cultural conditioning or the ego. It is direct knowing.
Ajahn Sumedho
Noticing the difference today
It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer,
it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening.
Pema Chodron
Such as we are
A Zen Master once said simply, “We are saved such as we are”. Mindfulness has been such a blessed relief because it has given me a way to hold everything in my life compassionately, just as it is. Over years of practice, almost invisibly, mindfulness has been slowly stitching the old wound of feeling not enough…. As we can bow to the wounds in ourselves and the wounds in others the wounds begin, in their own time, with grace to close. The great way is not difficult if we don’t pick and choose.
Gordon Peerman, Blessed Relief: What Christians can learn from Buddhists about Suffering
Image taken from The Kitsch and the Curious Blog
Sunday Quote: Everything is in the present
The past is a memory of a former Now;
the future is a mental projection of an expected Now.
Eckhard Tolle
Mindfulbalance 