Birth, old age, Sickness, and death:
From the beginning this is the way things have always been.
Any thought of release from this life will wrap you only more tightly in its snares.
The sleeping person looks for a Buddha, The troubled person turns toward meditation.
But the one who knows that there’s nothing to seek, knows too that there’s nothing to say.
She keeps her mouth closed.
Ly Ngoc Kieu, 1041 – 1113, Vietnamese zen Buddhist nun.
Translation Thich Nhat Hahn and Jane Hirshfield
The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest gem.
Cherish your body.
It is yours this time only.
The human form is won with difficulty.
It is easy to lose.
All worldly things are brief,
Like a flash of lightning in the sky.
This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop
That disappears even as it comes into being.
Therefore set your goal.
Make use of every day and night to achieve it
Je Tsongkhapa, 1357–1419, Tibetan Buddhist monk
It takes a long time to sift through the more superficial voices of your own gift in order to enter into the deep signature and tonality of your Otherness. When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to develop your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World
We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.
Pema Chödrön
Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you.
Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
Eckhart Tolle, A new Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose
Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t – and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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