Make my day

Even if our movement is restricted, there are countless opportunities to have an impact on another persons mood

I think sometimes about this phrase, “made my day” — that we have the power, with our words and with all kinds of small gestures like that. Even somebody being really nice in a checkout line, or you being nice to somebody in a checkout line, after the last two people were really rude to them. And you watch a transformation take place that you made — that their day was getting broken, and you made. What an incredible power we have, to walk through the world, making somebody’s day.

Krista Tippett, On Being Blog, in conversation with Ross Gay

Everything revealed in each moment

“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass. The moon does not get wet, nor is the drop of water broken.

And the whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in even one drop of water”.  Dogen, 

In truth, the smallest stem of a damaged heart, like a single blade of grass, holds the essence of everything alive.

Enlightenment is the kiss of anything – moon, storm, or kindness – that opens us to that essence.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Sunday Quote: Fleeting beauty

Blossoms in full bloom at the moment, but their beauty only lasts for about a week. In Japanese, the term used for passing beauty is 儚い (hakanai), meaning “fleeting” or “fragile”, reminding us to fully inhabit each moment without holding onto it

Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things

than to live as hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.

The Dhammapada, 8, 113

Space that leads to profound peace

The wisdom that arises from mindfulness makes space for the sense of self to be and not to be.

Not believing any one these fleeting identities to be who we really are, we release being concerned about any of it. In fact, we sit back and watch the whole show like an amused grandmother, quietly watching over the antics of her grandchildren. This is the profound peace we are so busy searching for. It does not come from creating and perfecting our personality.

Freedom comes when we see through the machinations of “self” and cease to be bothered by or believe any of it.

Mark Coleman, From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness

The Journey

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.

Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything.

that really isn’t you

so you can be who you were meant to be

in the first place.

Paulo Coelho

Sunday Quote: New worlds

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.

Tuli Kupferberg, 1923 – 2010, American counterculture poet and author.