We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara – the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
There is a deep difference between inactivity and rest. Inactivity is often filled with mental chatter and tension. True rest is a mindful ‘non-doing.’ It is the art of releasing the need to control, to achieve, and to manage every moment. It is in these moments of sincere letting go that we truly restore ourselves and come back to our natural state of ease.
Joseph Emet, Buddha’s Book of Happiness: Teachings for Achieving Lasting Peace, Joy, and Fearlessness
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke was secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin when he temporarily lost the ability to write. To Rodin, this meant that Rilke had stopped seeing.
He suggested that the poet go to the Paris Zoo every day and look at one animal until he “saw” it.
Seventy-two poems later, all about a panther, Rilke could say, as he later said of the painter Paul Cezanne , “Suddenly one has the right eyes“
Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage
One of the foundational “truths” of Buddhism is that there is an unsatisfactory nature to our existence, which does not mean that we are getting it wrong.
“Dukkha” arises from the brain’s tendency to crave what it doesn’t have, resist what it doesn’t like, and cling to what’s fleeting
– leading to a background hum of stress.
Rich Hanson, Buddhas Brain
Home is not just the place where you happen to be born.
It’s the place where you become yourself.
For some of us, that means refusing to be just one self, or belonging to just one place.
Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness
The sailor who does not adjust to the wind conditions will have a difficult time.
One ship drives east and another drives west by the same winds that blow.
Its the set of the sails
and not the gales that determines the way they go.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 – 1919, American author and poet.
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