Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
When the mind has settled, we are
established in our essential nature, which
is unbounded consciousness.
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed
by the activity of the mind.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behaviour.
You are beneath the thinker.
You are the stillness beneath the mental noise.
You are the love and joy beneath the pain
Eckhart Tolle
When you check your own mind properly,
you stop blaming others for your problems
Lama Thubten Yeshe, Your mind is your religion
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5, v 16
When there’s space in the mind, the mind relaxes, and we feel a simple sense of delight. We experience the possibility of living a life in which we are not continuously aggravated by emotions, discursiveness, and concepts about the nature of things…. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
We seem to presume that others have their lives together and that this would be good for us also, that we will finally, one day, arrive…
The first day of autumn
returning from alms round
I set down my bowl by the temple
to go play with the children.
Last year, a foolish monk.
This year, no change.
Ryokan, 1758–1831, Zen Buddhist monk
We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for difficult Times
