A burning patience

Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets: The whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: “Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind

Pablo Neruda, 1904 – 1973, Chilean poet

Tolerance

People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness.

Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.


The Dalai Lama

Not more, but less

When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves-from other people, relationships, or material goods-or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion. 

Completion comes, not from adding another piece to ourselves,

but from surrendering our ideas of perfection

Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective

Good and bad habits

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten path for ourselves.

I had not lived there a week, before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Beyond likes and dislikes

The person who has gone beyond likes and dislikes, Sri Ramakrishna will say, is like an autumn leaf floating in the wind.

It floats gently here when the wind flows here, it goes there when the wind blows there, and slowly it settles to the ground.

Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living

Recognize what you have

Focus on the positive things you have, rather than the size of the task ahead of you.

Jesus said to his disciples, “How many loaves have you? Mark 6:38

Why worry about the loaves and fishes?

If you say the right words, the wine expands.

If you say them with love and the felt ferocity of that love and the felt necessity of that love, the fish explode into many.

Imagine him, speaking, and don’t worry about what is reality, or what is plain, or what is mysterious.

If you were there, it was all those things.

If you can imagine it, it is all those things.

Eat, drink, be happy. Accept the miracle.

Accept, too, each spoken word spoken with love.

Mary Oliver, Logos