And now the teaching on yoga begins….
Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, c 400 AD.
The world around us would be desolate
except for the world within us
Wallace Stevens, from The Snow Man
phot Kor!An
This is the real secret of life
to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work, realize it is play
Alan Watts
photo vatobob
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular
but because it never forgot what it could do
Naomi Shihab Nye, Famous
photo tony hisgett
It helps me to review my practice of gratefulness by applying … the rule I learned as a boy for crossing an intersection: “Stop, look, go.” Before going to bed, I glance back over the day and ask myself: Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or did I trudge on in a daze? Was I too busy to wake up to surprise? And once I stopped, did I look for the opportunity of that moment? Or did I allow the circumstances to distract me from the gift within the gift? (This tends to happen when the gift’s wrappings are not attractive.) And finally, was I alert enough to go after it, to avail myself fully of the opportunity offered to me?
My simple recipe for a joyful day is this: Stop and wake up; look and be aware of what you see; then go on with all the alertness you can muster for the opportunity the moment offers. Looking back in the evening, on a day on which I made these three steps over and over, is like looking at an apple orchard heavy with fruit.
David Steindl-Rast, Awake, Aware and Alert
Often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held. I am learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to fix those we love.
Mark Nepo
Mindfulbalance 