Listen, are you breathing just a little,
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII
The path of love is not the absence of fear. Real love is made possible through vulnerability. Vulnerability is the possibility of having one’s heart open enough to let love in, and also let pain in. The path of love is not the avoiding of suffering, but the welcoming of joy and suffering alike, the way a gracious host would.
So no, the path of love is not being impervious to fear.
It is simply the stubborn refusal to let fear have the last word.
Omid Safi, We must Cling to Love
photo Eric kilby
The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in I arrive, breathing out I arrive”. This is the address of happiness, the address of life. The Buddha said “Life is accessible only in the present moment”. Life with all its wonders is accessible now. So we train in coming back to the present moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh, You are Here
photo kevin higgins
When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.
From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.
Rumi
photo serge ottaviani
Whenever one of these states arise, just know that it has arisen. To see feelings in the right way is to see them as a sort of imposter, not identifying them as ourselves. Anger or doubt are not us: they are not people or beings. So see them without giving them an identity, as just strangers coming in and then leaving. When there is cause they arise, and when there is no cause they fall away.
Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth
photo daquella Manera
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