In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.
In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention.
And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness
Just for today claim a window of time – even ten minutes is enough to begin – and rest into an experience of stillness.
Connect gently with your breath, breathing in the life-sustaining breath of the spirit, breathing out and releasing whatever distracts us from this moment. As thoughts or anxieties arise, gently release them and return to this moment. The invitation is toward both an outer and inner silence. Notice the way silence nourishes you and consider ways to give yourself this gift each day.
Christine Valters Paintner, Benedictine oblate, spiritual director, and author, The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.
Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The earth has been broken open a thousand times to feed us.
What if our pain is also a seed?
Mark Nepo, Inside the Miracle
The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent – flowers, tables, mountains, political regimes, bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
We cannot find anything that is permanent.
Impermanence is more than an idea.
It is a practice to help us touch reality.
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Much misery arises from the fantasy that things might be otherwise.
Half the anxiety of having “too much to do” stems from not seeing that there will always be too much to do – so you can stop struggling to get on top of it all. And as the writer Sam Harris notes, we make various everyday problems worse with our implicit indignation that we must deal with them at all – as if we imagined we might one day get to live a problem-free life.
Christian Bobin, a French poet, describes an epiphany: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought, an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.”
There’s much that people shouldn’t have to cope with, and that we should fight. But coping per se? That’s just life.
Oliver Burkeman, Too many problems? Maybe coping isn’t the answer
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