Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,
but from wanting to control it.
Kahlil Gibran
Tag: Be fully present
Sunday Quote: Stop waiting
Dance in the body you have.
Agnes de Mille, 1905 – 1993, American dancer and choreographer.
Everything is a mess, but…
All mystics . . . no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well.
Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare
Anthony De Mello, Awareness
Don’t look to others
Every person has a vocation to be someone:
but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation
he can only be one person: himself.
Thomas Merton
Master Rinzai said ‘Place no head above your own’.
That is, to look outside of ourselves for true peace and satisfaction is hopeless.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
Life as teacher
Repetition is not failure. Ask the Waves. Ask the Leaves. Ask the Wind
There is no expected pace for inner learning. What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson. We fall down as many times as we need to, to learn how to fall and get up. We fall in love as many times as we need to, to learn how to hold and be held. We misunderstand the many voices of truth as many times as we need to, to truly hear the choir of diversity that surrounds us. We suffer our pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal. No one really likes this, of course, but we deal with our dislike in the same way, again and again, until we learn what we need to know about the humility of acceptance.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Underneath the grey clouds
Even on a grey snowy morning like this one…
The mind is luminous, brightly shining, and this is never absent. However, it is sullied by incoming defilements, coloured by the thoughts and emotions that people put upon it. If you were to see the luminous freedom of the mind, you would cultivate it before anything else, keeping it free from all attachments
Anguttara Nikaya, early Buddhist scripture
