The earth has been broken open a thousand times to feed us.
What if our pain is also a seed?
Mark Nepo, Inside the Miracle
Sunday Quote: seeds
Tag: Mindfulness
simplicity
On the occasion of the funeral of Pope Francis, an example of leadership as service, of simplicity in the face of a world of excess and a worldview in contrast to what has taken centre stage these last few months and years.
The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need, those who have nothing apart from their poverty. … When we go out to the margins, to the suffering, we discover something new: the joy of service.
Pope Francis, Homily 2015, On Serving the poor
Simplicity does not mean poverty or austerity. It is the conscious choice to reduce the superfluous in order to focus on the essential – what truly matters in life.
The more we clutter our lives with distractions, the less space we have for genuine contentment. Happiness thrives in simplicity, in moments of quiet presence rather than in the relentless pursuit of more.
Matthieu Ricard Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill
everything changes
The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent – flowers, tables, mountains, political regimes, bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
We cannot find anything that is permanent.
Impermanence is more than an idea.
It is a practice to help us touch reality.
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Why we suffer
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is.
When the mind is perfectly clear, “what is” is what we want.
Byron Katie
it is serene
Sometimes the wisest thing to do is not interfere. The universe is already in harmony
Heaven does nothing (wú wéi), yet it is serene; Earth does nothing, yet it is at peace.
By their non-action, the ten thousand things are transformed…
A wise person imitates this: lets the world be as it is, and all things arrange themselves.
Chuang Tzu, The Way of Heaven (Tiān Dào) Chapter 13
Back to work
Much misery arises from the fantasy that things might be otherwise.
Half the anxiety of having “too much to do” stems from not seeing that there will always be too much to do – so you can stop struggling to get on top of it all. And as the writer Sam Harris notes, we make various everyday problems worse with our implicit indignation that we must deal with them at all – as if we imagined we might one day get to live a problem-free life.
Christian Bobin, a French poet, describes an epiphany: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought, an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.”
There’s much that people shouldn’t have to cope with, and that we should fight. But coping per se? That’s just life.
Oliver Burkeman, Too many problems? Maybe coping isn’t the answer
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