Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty,
it means a change in how those difficulties are met
Marl Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life
photo chris gunns
Tag: impermanence
Choosing what gives us life
Do what you love.
Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good – be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
Not letting this day pass
The ancient Romans had it right:
we lose so much if we are caught up in our fears
and let our days pass, not making time for what is really important.
Begin at once to live
and count each separate day as a separate life,
Seneca
Sunday Quote: The Unknown
Life consists in penetrating the unknown
and fashioning our actions in accord
with the new knowledge thus acquired
Leo Tolstoy
A flash of lightning
I had a conversation the other morning with a friend on the need to have a certain lightness in the way we hold life each day, a kind of simplicity. Getting the balance between the demands of love and the pull it places on the heart on one hand and detachment on the other is not easy. However, modern society stimulates attachment, so the letting-go perspective of all the wisdom and religious traditions is a useful reminder. The fact that it is a consistent presence in all cultures would suggest that it is a truth closely related to our deepest happiness:
So you should view this fleeting world
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Diamond Sutra
A pilgrim soul
In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission.
When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition.
It will always mean leaving something behind,…
The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.
David Richo, How to be an Adult
