The mind is clear like space
– but we clutter it with ‘shoulds.’
Put down the furniture of your opinions,
and the whole sky is available.
Joan Halifax, Being with Dying
Clear
Tag: Mindfulness
Finding peace
When we stop insisting that life be other than it is, we begin to find peace. Acceptance does not mean approval, passivity, or giving up.
It means facing reality with open eyes and an open heart, letting life teach us what it will.
We mature when we stop trying to make life easy and start working with life as it is.
This is the beginning of real freedom — the freedom to love what is, even when it isn’t what we wanted.
David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
Getting stuck in things
We reduce, concretize, or substantialize experiences or feelings which are., in their very nature, fleeting or evanescent.
In so doing, we define ourselves by our moods and by our thoughts
We do not just let ourselves be happy or sad
For instance, we must be a happy person or a sad one
This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to make “things” out of that which is no thing
Mark Epstein
Sunday Quote: Stand in the rain
Maybe the meaning of life is just to see the beauty in the ordinary.
To love the things that don’t last, because nothing does.
To stand in the rain and feel it.
To be alive in the world.
Niall Williams, History of the Rain
Flowing, not solid
We often give the things that bother us more weight than they deserve, forgetting that all things arise and pass away
The great beings see with their wisdom eye
all things like reflections of forms
They do not become stuck in the mire
of so-called objects.
Arya Nagarjuna, 2nd-century Indian Buddhist philosopher, Sixty Verses of Reasoning
Just the way it is
Things do not always go according to plan:
Life does not owe us a smooth ride.
Our plans will be disrupted, and our expectations will often go unmet.
The question is not why this happens, but how we respond.
David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change… and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
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