Trying too hard

If we are honest, many of us consider ourselves to be rather lazy, still haunted by those school reports that said “must try harder!” So it might surprise you if I suggest that much of what we do comes unstuck not because we don’t try hard enough, but because we try too hard, or at least try too hard in the wrong sort of way. We aim too high, too quickly, being prematurely concerned with correctness and results at the expense of practice and process.

Where does this perfectionist task-master come from? I suspect it is the highly toxic combination of a lack of confidence and a subtle sense of unworthiness. So instead of wholeheartedly embracing things, as is our birthright, we snatch at life in a sort of smash-and-grab raid before those in authority deem us imposters and ask us to leave, preferably by the back door

Manjusvara, 1953 – 2011 English-born Buddhist writer

Happiness is an inside job

If you look for the Buddha outside of your own mind,
the Buddha becomes the devil

Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.

Lift your eyes

How can we ever lose interest in life?

Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.

Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Zen monk, hermit and poet

Sunday Quote: listen

I tried to discover, in the sounds of forests and waves, words that others could not hear, and I opened up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

[Je tâchais de découvrir, dans les bruits des forêts et des flots, des mots que les autres hommes n’entendaient point, et j’ouvrais l’oreille pour écouter la révélation de leur harmonie.]

Flaubert, November

Intimacy with disappearance

The only choice we have, as we mature, is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous, and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearances to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully,

or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

David Whyte, “Vulnerability” in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

A change of mind

If you really want to escape the things that bother you,

what you’re needing is not to be in a different place

but to be a different person.

Seneca