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
But how shall we educate men to goodness,
to a sense of one another,
to a love of the truth?
And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?
Dan Berrigan, born on this day 1921. Died 2016, Jesuit priest and anti-war activist. His words, addressed during the Vietnam War, are even more relevant today
What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until it all ends.
Mary Oliver What Can I Say [extract]
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