Tag: Joy

Not depending on something else to make us happy

Karl Duffy2 Comments

In Tibet they have a saying, “The joy of a king is no greater than the joy of a beggar”.  It isn’t what we possess — it’s what we enjoy. This means the experience of genuine cheerfulness cannot be bought or sold. What makes it genuinely cheerful is that we are free from fixation and attachment. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind. This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Power of Being Cheerful

The one who knows

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Every time I reacted negatively, pushing things away, that action implied that there was something to fear. That this feeling or this thought was dangerous; that it was going to really hurt me, or invade me; that it was something that was really me and mine. As I began to welcome it all I realised that when you accept everything, only then can you sense that, after all, there is nothing to fear. None of it really belongs to a self or comes from a self. It cannot touch the mind which knows, cannot affect its nature. Whatever shape of vessel you pour the water into, with this same total accommodation, the water changes to the shape of the bottle. It doesn’t say: ‘I will not be poured into a square bottle, square bottles are not my scene. Round bottles only, please!’  When there is complete acceptance, there is just the sense of being the knowing, being that which is aware of all that comes through the mind.

Ajahn Amaro

Staying with where our life is at this moment

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Consciously or unconsciously,

we avoid facing things as they are in themselves

and so we want God to open for us a door which is beyond…

(But) to find life’s purpose we must go through the door of ourselves.

Krishnamurti

The key to contentment

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A man is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence of greed.  Gurdjieff

We suffer, often unknowingly, from wanting to be in two places at once, from wanting to experience more than one person can. Feeling like we are missing something or that we’re being left out, we want it all. But being human we can’t have it all. The tension of all this can lead to an insatiable search, where our passion for life is stirred, but never satisfied. When caught in this mindset, no amount of travel is enough, no amount of love is enough, no amount of success is enough.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t explore our curiosity and venture into the unknown. What I’m referring to here is that seed of lack that makes us feel insufficient, and then somehow, to compensate, we start to race through life with one eye on what we have and one eye on what we don’t….When we believe we are behind or less than, we somehow start to want more than we need, as if what we don’t have will fill in our pain and make us feel whole, as if the thing we have not tasted will be the thing to bring us alive. The truth is that one experience taken to heart will satisfy our hunger to be loved by everyone.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

A love that does not have conditions

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We can develop a love that is steadfast and universal. We develop it not because we force ourselves to love so fully. Rather, we discover that loving unconditionally is the greatest source of joy, and that we are the loser for any hesitation or interruption in that love, such as “I would really love you if you would just do your share of the cooking, if you would just do this, if you would be like that.”

Whenever we hesitate like that, we lose. This helps me remember not to mortgage away any of my days by having a grudge or a grievance or making myself distant. That would simply cause a rupture in that steadfast, universal love that is so joyful.

Sylvia Boorstein

Bring compassion to what happens

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Meditation is an experiment we are making, bringing us out of our normal habits of intense self-judgment, comparing, and impatience. Mindfulness isn’t about what is happening; it is about how we are relating to what is happening — how much awareness, balance and compassion are bringing to this moment’s experience, whatever it is. For example, it is very likely you will find your attention wandering, not 45 minutes after you first begin, but probably within a few seconds. You get lost in a fantasy, or fall asleep. That is normal and not a sign of failure. What I emphasize is that the critical moment in your meditation is the moment you see you’ve been distracted; instead of falling into our usual habits of self-condemnation, that’s a time we can practice letting go while being kind to ourselves, and work with the renewing power of beginning again.

Sharon Salzberg, Meditation and Mindfulness for All of Us.