In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control.
Where will I find good and bad?
In me, in my choices.
Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher, 55 – 135
We can feel the possibility of balance in our lives,
when we recognize that life is not in our control
Jack Kornfield
The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises.
Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
Pema Chodron
It’s true, I think, as Kenko says in his Idleness,
That all beauty depends upon disappearance,
The bitten edges of things,
the gradual sliding away
Into tissue and memory,
the uncertainty
And dazzling impermanence of days we beg our meanings from,
And their frayed loveliness.
Charles Wright, American poet, 1935 – , Lonesome Pine Special
(Kenko, 1284 – 1350, Buddhist monk, author of Essays in Idleness)
Only one thing made him happy
and now that it was gone
everything made him happy.
Leonard Cohen
Non-doing has nothing to do with being indolent or passive. Quite the contrary. It takes great courage and energy to cultivate non-doing, both in stillness and in activity. Nor is it easy to make a special time for non-doing and to keep at it in the face of everything in our lives which needs to be done.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Mindfulbalance 