There will always be times when you feel discouraged.
I too, have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it.
I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Don’t keep a chair
Tag: Present moment
Resting In How Things Are
Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities.
Geshe Shawopa 1070–1141(?), quoted in Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of my Perfect teacher
Sunday Quote: Whats not wrong
We often ask, ‘what’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We feel suffering, anger, and depression, and produce more such seeds. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us. We should learn to ask, ‘what’s not wrong?’ and be in touch with that.
One of my favourite thoughts from Thich Nhat Hahn, who died yesterday, aged 95
Nothing to Seek
Birth, old age, Sickness, and death:
From the beginning this is the way things have always been.
Any thought of release from this life will wrap you only more tightly in its snares.
The sleeping person looks for a Buddha, The troubled person turns toward meditation.
But the one who knows that there’s nothing to seek, knows too that there’s nothing to say.
She keeps her mouth closed.
Ly Ngoc Kieu, 1041 – 1113, Vietnamese zen Buddhist nun.
Translation Thich Nhat Hahn and Jane Hirshfield
Take the time
It takes a long time to sift through the more superficial voices of your own gift in order to enter into the deep signature and tonality of your Otherness. When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to develop your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World
With all your energy
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
