A similar thought to others this week. We are always gently working on the heart’s capacity to accept life as it actually is
When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept
and he said if he were God
he would have made the world just so and no different.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward.
They think they live by what they want.
But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of.
What they don’t want.
Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
Do non-doing;
Strive for the effortless.
Find flavor in that which has no flavor.
Deal with the small as if it were the great, deal with the few as if it were the many,
Respond to resentment with virtue.
Plan for the difficult while it is still easy;
work on the great while it is still small.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 63
All that power from roots.
Imagine you must survive
without running
Ada Limón , Ancestors
He knows how to enjoy the fullness of each moment, as his own mind is serene and at peace. There is a sufficiency in the things around him
At Nantai I sit quietly with an incense burning,
One day of contentment, all things are forgotten,
Not that my mind is stopped and thoughts are put away,
But that there is really nothing to disturb my serenity.
Shou-an , quoted in Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism – First Series
One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few… My life… lacks this quality of significance and therefore beauty, because there is so little empty space…. There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours in the day, or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself. Too many activities, and people, and things. Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures – an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.
Mindfulbalance 