When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years, I’ve come to call resting with the discomfort “the detox period,” because when you don’t act on your habitual patterns, it’s like giving up an addiction. You’re left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that.
Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
No one can harm you , not even your own worst enemy, as much as your own mind untrained.
And no one can help you, not even your most loving mother and father, as much as your own mind well-trained.
The Buddha
To find equanimity and peace requires an acceptance of the mystery of life itself….When you can appreciate your life as part of the unfolding mystery of the immense forces that formed the entire universe, you can more easily accept the difficulties and hardships that you face. They are part of the unfolding of life. Many of the difficulties you’ve faced include endings, but none of them so far have been the end of your story. Without knowing the whole story, it is impossible to draw definite conclusions about our difficulties. We are still in the middle of them and don’t know how they will turn out. There is no rule book for life.
Jack Kornfield, A Lamp in the Darkness
Dance first, think later,
It’s the natural order.
Samuel Beckett
Consciousness is said to be a field, a plot of land in which every kind of seed has been planted, seeds of suffering, happiness, joy, sorrow, fear, anger, and hope. The quality of our life depends on which of these seeds we water. The practice of mindfulness is to recognize each seed as it sprouts, and to water the most wholesome seeds whenever possible.
Thich Nhat Hahn
This vanishes, that vanishes, but that which knows
their vanishing doesn’t vanish. . . .
All that remains is simple
awareness, utterly pure.
Ajahn Maha Boowa
