Tag: heart

What happiness is not

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We tend to equate happiness with two things, pleasure and lack of tension. Hence we fantasize that for us to be happy we would need to be in a situation within which we would be free of all the tensions that normally flood into our lives from: pressure, tiredness, interpersonal friction, physical pain, financial worry, disappointment in our jobs, frustration with our churches, frustration with our favorite sports teams, and every other headache and heartache that can appear. Happiness, as it is superficially conceived of, means perfect health, perfectly fulfilled relationships, a perfect job, no anxiety or tension in life, no disappointments, and the time and money to enjoy the good life.

But that isn’t what constitutes happiness. Meaning is what constitutes happiness and meaning isn’t contingent upon pain and tension being absent from our lives. C.S. Lewis taught that happiness and unhappiness color backwards: If our lives end up happy, we realize that we have always been happy even through the trying times, just as if our lives end up unhappy we realize that we have always been unhappy, even during the pleasurable periods of our lives. Where we end up ultimately in terms of meaning will determine whether our lives have been happy or unhappy. Happiness has a lot more to do with meaning than with pleasure.

Ron Rolheiser, Meaning and Happiness.

Sunday Quote: Being comfortable in our own skin

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If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path.

Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

Love and risk

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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that  casket –  safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S. Lewis, The Fours Loves

Just get there

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Try making a commitment to getting into the meditation posture at least once a day. You don’t have to sit for any length of time., just get on the cushion. A lot of times the hardest part is getting there.

Once you’re sitting down you think “I might as well sit for a few minutes” and more often than not, you’re getting full sessions in.

Joseph Goldstein in Commit to Sit

Simple Daily Practices: Transform your moments of waiting.

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When we are forced to wait, say in a traffic jam, our instinct is to do something to distract ourselves from the discomfort of waiting. We turn on the radio, call or text someone on the phone, or just sit and fume. Practicing mindfulness while waiting helps people find many small moments in the day when they can bring the thread of awareness up from where is lies hiding in the complex fabric of their lives. Waiting, a common event that usually produces negative emotions, can be transformed into a gift, the gift of free time to practice. The mind benefits doubly: first, by abandoning negative mindstates, and second, by gaining the beneficial effects of even a few extra minutes of practice woven into the day.

Jan Chozen Bays

Creating one’s life

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Exister, c’est changer; changer, c’est mûrir; mûrir,c’est se créer sans cesse.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating yourself without ceasing.

Henri-Louis Bergson, French Philosopher.