Frequently we don’t know the answers to some of the questions that life throws at us. We come to see that there is always a balance between knowing and not knowing. We prefer knowing, certainty, clear ideas. But maybe wisdom comes from being able to allow what we don’t know, and from learning to trust.
This is how we become wise:
When the formed
is taught by the unformed.
Chuang Tzu
photo taro taylor
All the world is full of suffering.
It is also full of overcoming
Helen Keller
photo evgord
Simplify the problem of life:
distinguish the necessary and the real.
Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.
Thoreau
Whenever you experience any pain or difficulty, always remember one of the deep meanings of the word suffering: asking the world for something it can never give you. We expect and ask impossible things from the world. We ask for the perfect home and job and that all the things we work hard to build and arrange run perfectly at the right time and place. Of course, that is asking for something that can never be given. We ask for profound meditation and enlightenment, right here and now. But that’s not the way this universe works. If you ask for something that the world can’t supply, you should understand that you’re asking for suffering. So whether you work or meditate, please accept that things will go wrong from time to time. Your job is not to ask for things the world can’t give you. Your job is to observe.
Ajahn Brahm, It all goes wrong anyway
photo alejandrollinaresgarcia
Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones:
Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time – that this the basic message
Pema Chodron
photo Immanuel giel
He thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge and leant over,
and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him,
then he would suddenly know everything that there was to be known.
A. A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner, chapter 6
Mindfulbalance 