Enjoying life is not difficult in the exciting moments. However, the key is the ordinary moments….
I like to sit on a verandah overlooking the valley, counting the Pleiades coming up in the cold air, the Crow, the Big Bear turning around the pole as the night goes on.
And that’s what meditation is like really, doing nothing, looking at nothing in particular, relishing the plainness, the life in between.
John Tarrant, Bring me the Rhinoceros
In the course of [my] travels it became clear to me that tranquility and peace have nothing to do with the most beautiful places on earth or the most interesting experiences.
They are only to be found in one’s heart.
Ayya Khema, I Give you my life: The Autobiography of a Buddhist Nun
In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top – the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation – and the plants at the bottom.
But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.”
We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn – we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
It’s impossible to be still and quiet all the time. As a whale or dolphin must break surface, only to dive back down, only to break surface again, each of us must break surface into the noise of the world, only to rest our way back into the depth of stillness, where we can know ourselves and life more deeply, until we have to break surface again. No one is ever done with this crossover between noise and stillness…..For the noise of the mind never dies. It can only be put in perspective, quieted until we can hear the more ancient voices that give us life.
Mark Nepo, Stopping the Noise
We have a deep need to feel as if we are in control ….
We are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance —
and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself.
It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.
Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
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