We already have what we need — the opportunity to weave the tapestry of happiness every day with the needle and thread of our own mind.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and brings understanding.
Ajahn Chah
Whenever you experience any pain or difficulty, always remember one of the deep meanings of the word “suffering” : asking the world for something it can never give you. We expect and ask impossible things from the world. We ask for the perfect home and job and that all the things we work hard to build and arrange run perfectly at the right time and place. Of course, that is asking for something that can never be given…. That’s not the way this universe works. If you ask for something that the world cannot supply you should understand that you are asking for suffering.
So whether you work or meditate, please accept that things will go wrong from time to time. Your job is not to ask for things the world cannot give you. Your job is to observe. Your job is not to prod and push this world to make it just the way you would like it to be. Your job is to understand, accept and let it go.
Ajahn Brahm, The Art of Disappearing.
Every two weeks, or so, I facilitate a Support Group for the Hospice volunteers, listening as they share their experiences of being with people towards the end of their life. Each time I am struck by the kind presence which they offer to those who are ill. After the last meeting it struck me again how being generous requires an ongoing leap of faith, as we often cannot see the effects of our presence or our words. It maybe these invisible kindnesses, which we offer quietly and without knowing their effect, are the greatest things we can do in our lives.
In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common story. Whether the ‘scarce resource’ is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around.
Parker Palmer
When you don’t punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness toward yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately. You don’t feel that you have to ignore your problems or exaggerate your potential. That kind of gentleness toward yourself and appreciation of yourself is very necessary. It provides the ground for helping yourself and others
Chögyam Trungpa, The Sanity We Are Born With
The best chance to be whole
is to love whatever gets in the way,
until it ceases to be an obstacle.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Gratitude welcomes what we are given. It doesn’t know any stories about how it should have been. To talk about gratitude is also to talk about what prevents gratitude, about resentment and bitterness. Resentment and bitterness are the residue that comes from dashed expectations. Since the world doesn’t fit our stories, there is a tension where I expected life to be more favorable to my hopes than it has been, or feel that the world has not bothered enough with me. That bitterness sticks in the body and the mind, so that the mind reruns its painful stories and the body stores them in awkwardness and discomfort.
John Tarrant, Practices of Gratitude.
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