The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you are famous. Pizza tastes good regardless of your job title.
The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness – an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications – which, by the way, literally means “distant connections” – we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from every side to become efficient rather than intimate.
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
There is great happiness in not wanting,
in not being something,
in not going somewhere.
Jiddu Krisnamurti
Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death.
But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
“Socrates” in Dan Millman, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
(A huge thanks to Ted Szi for letting me know the correct origin of this quote)
When we walk on the earth with reverence,
beauty will decide to trust us
The rushed heart and arrogant mind
lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible embrace
That’s basically the instruction that Dzigar Kongtrul gave me. And now I pass it on to you. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering – yours, mine and that of all living beings.
Pema Chodron, Taking The Leap
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