The way to live in the present
is to understand that it is all that we have
Joseph Goldstein
Fully
Tag: Mindfulness
Recognize this
The mind is naturally spacious.
It can hold anything – joy, sorrow, fear, excitement—without being destroyed or overwhelmed. The trouble begins when we forget this capacity and start to believe that our thoughts and emotions are solid, permanent, or bigger than the mind itself. We contract around them, tightening our mental grip, as if holding on could somehow make life more secure. But the truth is, the mind is like the sky—vast, open, and inherently calm. Clouds (thoughts, worries, pleasures) pass through, but the sky remains unchanged.
Meditation is the practice of remembering this.…This spaciousness isn’t something we need to create; it’s already here. Our practice is to recognize it. When we do, life becomes lighter. Difficult emotions don’t disappear, but they no longer define us.
Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness
losing today
The greatest obstacle to living fully is expectancy,
which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.
You are arranging what lies in the control of fortune and abandoning what lies in yours.
Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius Letter CI
Sunday Quote: not the difficulty
The boundary to our freedom is not the reality we face,
but our refusal to face it.
David Richo
The weekend: unplug
A lot of our day is spent going around in a drama where we are the main protagonist.
All we need to do is unplug.
Then a sweet shift can happen in our sitting. We go from sitting there plugged into “our life” to a state where we can notice what that actually means
We might have seen images in the mind – of people, of a city, a room, whatever. We might have been hearing a kind of running commentary, like a sports reporter commenting on the action.
Henry Shukman
Don’t add anything
Choiceless awareness is pure observation without the observer.
When you look at a tree, a face, or your own reactions without naming, judging, or comparing, then there is no division between the observer and the observed – there is only seeing.
Jiddu Krisnamurti, The First and Last Freedom
Mindfulbalance 