Tag: balance

Wandering,

where we go matters less than what we notice.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Somebody says something to you that is designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense, or personal withdrawal, you let it pass right through you.

Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state.

You are then in your power – not in someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind. Whether it is a car alarm, a rude person, a flood, an earthquake, or the loss of all your possessions, the resistance mechanism is the same.

Eckhart Tolle

If you only walk on sunny days

you’ll never reach your destination.

Paulo Coelho

You must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding
and weaving of your ingrained ideas.

If you want to be rid of this invisible [turmoil],

you must just sit through it

and let go of everything

Hongzhi Zhengjue 1091–1157, Master in the Caodong school of Chan Buddhism

I have come to see the profound value of taking in the whole landscape of life and not rejecting or denying what we are given.

I have also learned that our waywardness, difficulties, and ‘crises’ might not be terminal obstacles. They can actually be gateways to wider, richer internal and external landscapes. If we willingly investigate our difficulties, we can fold them into a view of reality that is more courageous, inclusive, emergent, and wise – as have many others who have fallen over the edge.

Joan Halifax

When we see deeply into impermanence, we see into emptiness. Things are empty of any fixed, inherent identity because they are always changing.

This emptiness is not a void but a flowing, dynamic process. It is the very condition for the arising of all experience.

 Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening