Tag: balance

When you can’t get what you want, your underlying tendencies to get exasperated or feel let down come up – and they then interpret the situation as ‘lazy disorganized people’ or ‘no one considers my feelings’. Actually there are generally a number of causes as to why things don’t go my way — the Buddha just called it ‘dukkha’ – but the immediate reaction and interpretation are an indication of tendencies in one’s own mind. 

So just to pause at that point – reactions are normal, but we can read them, learn what they are, and that they take us into suffering. We don’t have to guess at why things aren’t going according to plan; and jumping to a conclusion is always a move into the shadows of one’s own mind. 

So, pause. A pause is not a disapproval or a judgement; it’s an opening of attention into awareness. And that allows us to respond to our reactions with mindfulness and compassion. 

Pausing is an essential, deep and accessible practice.

Ajahn Sucitto

For this new month….

We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any predetermined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program or plan for our lives.

Rather, we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your own destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you attend to yourself and seek to come into your presence, you will find exactly the right rhythm for your life

John O’Donohue, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Could human life’s central task be a matter of consciously discovering and becoming who we already are and somehow unconsciously know?

I believe so.

Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had

Richard Rohr

The key to freedom is realizing that you are not your thoughts or emotions. You are the witness to them.

When you stop identifying with them, you stop being disturbed by them, and your natural peace and bliss emerge

Michael Singer — The Untethered Soul

Adapt the pace of nature;

her secret is patience

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s easy to identify with all the places we’ve been hurt and abandoned, but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every condition?

If we can’t, we may spend this life protecting ourselves and never really risk really living

Sensei Bonnie Myotai Treace,