As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion. We will just continue to buy into our old mindsets of right and wrong, becoming more solid and closed to life. ….We practice letting go of our idea of a “goal” and letting go of our concept of “progress,” because right there, in that process of letting go, is where our hearts open and soften — over and over again.
Pema Chodron
Doesn’t contentment come from the heart rather than from having everything you want? This sense of gratitude and contentment creates a mental state that’s very pure and conducive for seeing clearly. Our society is very restless, very critical, very aware of what’s wrong. We’re always thinking of ways to make things better than they are…. We’ve developed the intellect — the ability to experiment, the wonders of modern science and so forth — but we’ve done it mostly out of curiosity and greed. If we had developed wisdom as well, then our intelligence would work in harmony with nature rather than by exploiting it.
Ajahn Sumedho, There’s No Place Like Here
Stand still, and allow the strange, deadly restlessness of our tragic age to fall away like the worn-out, dusty cloak that it is – a cloak that was once considered beautiful. The restlessness was considered the magic carpet of tomorrow, but now in reality we see it for what it is: a running away from oneself, a turning from that journey inward that all must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls.
Stand still, and look deep into the motivations of life.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty
When attention is not occupied by a specific task, like a job or a conversation, thoughts begin to wander in random circles. But in this case ‘random’ does not mean that there is an equal chance of having happy and sad thoughts. [T]he majority of thoughts that come to the mind when we are not concentrating are likely to be depressing.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
It seems to me that fear is more basic than the emotions. It comes from our basic confusion. Fear touches on the most basic aspect of the human dilemma: “How do we live in an uncertain world?” We understand this when we sit to practice. We don’t really know what to do with our experience. We either get lost in our thoughts or try to suppress them. Somehow, we can’t find our resting place with the energy and expression of our mind. It can feel overwhelming – scary. … So we can say that, due to our inability to relax around experience, we contract in fear or get lost in our confusion. It says in the teachings that this “overwhelm” causes us to cling tightly. This experience of clinging tightly is what we misunderstand as the self. We continue to look for stability and security, and yet the world (our inner and outer worlds) is not a static situation. What we experience as a self, we could say, is a continued desire for happiness and freedom from suffering. The problem we have is that there is so much bewilderment around our experience and not knowing what to do with it, we contract out of fear…..There is panic, which is a frozen, very physical, sensation. Our breath gets shallow. We feel like life is something happening to us, rather than feeling a part of the bigness of life.
But however contracted we get, life continues to flow.…no matter how tightly we hold on. We can’t separate ourselves from life. Even a fortress is part of life. And even as a fortress we are still in relationship with life and our mind. That we are part of the great interdependence of life means that actually, we are very, very big – infinite, in fact. So the purpose of practice is to find our true relationship with life, rather than contract. Trying to create security in a world that is fluid is a good definition of pain/samsara. The purpose is to value life and let it touch us and change us – so that we can be as fluid as life, which is a poignant and beautiful, freeing and emboldening experience.
Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, Moving Beyond Fear
Don’t think peace of mind only comes when you have fixed up all your problems and finished all your business. All your worrying, all your striving and struggling, has it ever got you where you really want to be? You can’t control the world and change it the way you would like it. Therefore you can only find peace of mind and achieve the meaning of life when by embracing the imperfections of life. How do you do that? By knowing that imperfection is in the nature of the world. So make peace with imperfection.
Ajahn Brahm
