A really clear and succinct definition of mindfulness practice, showing how it includes a evaluating, even judging aspect, discerning between helpful and unhelpful mental energies:
I often like to summarize correct practice in the following way:
Have mindfulness
and know bodily and mental phenomena as they really are
with a mind that is stable and impartial.
Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth
The cave you are afraid to enter
[is..] the source of what you are looking for.
Joseph Campbell
photo EMeczKa
Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change
and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller.
photo matpib
According to the ancient Chinese, one of the main goals in life is to reach the evening of our life without regret. So we can ask: What fears hold us back from fully embracing what is offered now? What preoccupied thoughts hinder us from seeing the beauty that is before us in each moment?
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in I arrive, breathing out I arrive”. This is the address of happiness, the address of life. The Buddha said “Life is accessible only in the present moment”. Life with all its wonders is accessible now. So we train in coming back to the present moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh, You are Here
photo kevin higgins
When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.
From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.
Rumi
photo serge ottaviani
