Suzuki Roshi once said about questioning our life, our purpose, “It’s like putting a horse on top of a horse and then climbing on and trying to ride. Riding a horse by itself is hard enough. Why add another horse? Then it’s impossible”
We add that extra horse when we constantly question ourselves rather than just live out our lives, and be who we are at every moment.
Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway.
When filled with qi, the body is like a tree branch filled with sap; it can bend and flow with the breeze, but it does not snap or lose its connection with the root. On the other hand, a stiff, dead branch is easily broken. Thus the adage of Lao Zi, “Concentrate the qi and you will achieve the utmost suppleness…
Suppleness is the essence of life“
Kenneth S. Cohen, The Way of Qigong
Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate upon the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or the future;
We are continually expecting the coming of some special hour when our life shall unfold itself in its full significance.
And we do not observe that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious grains from a loosely fastened bag.
Alexander Elchaninov, 1881 – 1943, Russian Orthodox priest
According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify. People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them.
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The intelligent way of working with emotions is to try to relate to their basic substance. The basic “isness” quality of the emotions, the fundamental nature of the emotions, is just energy. And if one is able to relate with the energy, then the energies have no conflict with you. They become a natural process.
Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
If you say that getting money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time.
You’ll be doing things you don’t like in order to go on living, that is, to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.
Alan Watts
Mindfulbalance 