There is a Tibetan saying: ‘When things are difficult, then let yourself be happy.’ Otherwise, if happiness is relying on others or the environment or your surroundings, it’s not possible. Like an ocean, the waves always go like that but underneath, it always remains calm. So we have that ability as well. On an intellectual level, we may see things as desperate, difficult. But underneath, at the emotional level, you can keep calm.
The Dalai Lama
People who practice mindfulness find that they don’t have to trust the narrative self –
that its lost its hold over them as the primary reference of truth and reality.
It’s such a sweet thing
To go from having been habitually convinced by this narrative self, to no longer being convinced by it, is a huge shift.
Henry Shukman, Mountain Cloud Zen Center
We rarely contact this simple moment,
so used to constant input and excitement,
we lack fine-tuning into all the subtleties of this instant, the ability to register a quiet aliveness without the stirring of expectation.
Toni Packer, 1927-2013, teacher and writer.
Develop a mind that alights nowhere
The Lotus Sutra
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished into the world.
Mary Oliver, One or Two Things
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness
and just be happy
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880 – 1918, French poet and playwright
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