Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.
Ketut Liyer, Balinese healer in Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver, written during his last, terminal, illness
But maybe that’s the way it should be.
Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart
Haruki Murakami, Samsa in Love
Reminders to live fully, with joy and a deep appreciation of this precious human life.
The Buddha recommends that we recite the “Five Remembrances” every day:
1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
Thich Nhat Hahn
There is dying in the sense of letting this body go, letting go of feelings, emotions, these things we call our identity, and practicing to let those go.
The trouble is, we don’t let ourselves die day by day. Instead, we carry ideas about each other and ourselves. Sometimes it’s good, but sometimes it’s detrimental to our growth. We brand ourselves and imprison ourselves to an idea.
Letting go is a practice not only when you reach 90. It’s one of the highest practices. This can move you toward equanimity, a state of freedom, a form of peace.
Waking up each day as a rebirth, now that is a practice.
Brother Phap Dung, Plum Village senior disciple, Thich Nhat Hanh’s final mindfulness lesson: how to die peacefully
On the Feast of All Saints
Strangely, all of life’s problems, dilemmas, and difficulties are not resolved not by negativity, attack, criticism, force, or logical resolution, but always by falling into a larger “brightness” – by falling into the good, the true, and the beautiful – by falling into God.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
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