We do not think ourselves into new ways of living.
We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
In the second half of life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
new ways
Tag: impermanence
How we relate
The Buddha’s first insight was that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory – not because life is flawed,
but because we relate to it in ways that inevitably lead to suffering.
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
Getting stuck in things
We reduce, concretize, or substantialize experiences or feelings which are., in their very nature, fleeting or evanescent.
In so doing, we define ourselves by our moods and by our thoughts
We do not just let ourselves be happy or sad
For instance, we must be a happy person or a sad one
This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to make “things” out of that which is no thing
Mark Epstein
Sunday Quote: Stand in the rain
Maybe the meaning of life is just to see the beauty in the ordinary.
To love the things that don’t last, because nothing does.
To stand in the rain and feel it.
To be alive in the world.
Niall Williams, History of the Rain
Flowing, not solid
We often give the things that bother us more weight than they deserve, forgetting that all things arise and pass away
The great beings see with their wisdom eye
all things like reflections of forms
They do not become stuck in the mire
of so-called objects.
Arya Nagarjuna, 2nd-century Indian Buddhist philosopher, Sixty Verses of Reasoning
Just the way it is
Things do not always go according to plan:
Life does not owe us a smooth ride.
Our plans will be disrupted, and our expectations will often go unmet.
The question is not why this happens, but how we respond.
David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change… and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
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