Can you remember who you were,
before the world told you who you should be?
Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994, American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
To meditate is often to move through a land without paths.
In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves – There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind’s eye much wider…
Mindfulness …means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.
from Christophe Andre’s lovely book, Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment through Art
The Buddha taught his students to develop a power of love so strong that their minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.
No matter what kind of material is thrown into it, it will not burn.
Many experiences – good, bad, and indifferent – are thrown into the flowing river of our lives, but we are not burned, owing to the power of the love in our hearts.
Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness