Tag: Joy

Remember this today

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No matter what the situation

we are responsible  for our own mind states

Joseph Goldstein

Letting life flow

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How can you follow the course
of your life
if you do not let it flow?

Lao Tzu

Being happy today 1: Joyfulness is in our own hands

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Joy isn’t dependent on getting things, or on the world going the way you want, or on people behaving the way they should, or on their giving you all the things you like and want. Joyfulness isn’t dependent upon anything but your own willingness to be generous, kind, and loving. It’s that mature experience of giving, sharing, and developing the science of goodness. Virtuousness is the joy we can experience in this human realm. So, although what society is doing or what everyone else is doing is beyond my control -I can’t go around making everything how I want it – still, I can be kind, generous, and patient,and do good, and develop virtue. That I can do, and that’s worth doing, and not something anyone can stop me from doing.  However rotten or corrupted society is doesn’t make any difference to our ability to be virtuous and to do good.

Ajahn Sumedho

Being happy today 2: Finding joy today and everyday

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Look at everything
as though you were seeing it
either for the first
or the last time.
Then your time on earth
will be filled with glory

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

How to be serene

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All the world religions and wisdom traditions come to the same conclusion: True contentment comes about through  working out, through the twists and turns of one’s own life, a personal understanding of these deeply different realities.

For whoever has learned to love,

for whoever has learned to suffer,

life is imbued with serene beauty

Br Roger

Giving life’s events some space and time

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More lessons from these three days. There are different ways of saying that at times we need to be patient, to sit in silence and wait for the real meaning of what is happening to become clear. It is put beautifully in this quote: we need to give difficult periods the space their “gentle origins” demand. We do not need to “add on” stories, which only ultimately make things more difficult.

If you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge – from which new sorrows will be born for others – then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich.

Etty  Hillesum