Words stand between silence and silence:between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves, because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.
Thomas Merton
To live well, we need to be able to see what’s happening, in us and around us. We also need to know how not to get impulsively drawn into unskillful, reactive patterns of behavior that don’t serve us or those around us well. Mindfulness offers us a way of paying attention to what’s actually going on, to know what’s happening at an experiential level. And that is something that we tend not to train ourselves in these days — instead our education system, our workplaces, our media, our governments, all tend to train us in creating and valuing concepts or products — we get stuck at a head level and a doing level, driven by thinking and activity. There’s nothing wrong with ideas or products, but there’s an imbalance in our culture whereby a more intuitive knowledge is ignored, or just not cultivated, and it is this kind of intuitive awareness that mindfulness practice can help us to unlock. So mindfulness could be a way for us to restore balance — to help us recalibrate in a way that enables us to connect with our deepest, most heartfelt values and to act in accordance with them more often. That in turn, could lead to us living happier, healthier lives in a happier, healthier world.
Ed Haliwell, author of The Mindfulness Manifesteto, Interview in Tricycle Magazine
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
Mary Oliver, Messenger
Notice how much of the day you hold tightly to your fears, especially the fear of the loss of control. All of our “what if” thinking falls into this category: “What if I don’t do it right?” “What if it’s painful?” “What if I look bad?” These thoughts are based on wanting to control some imagined future more than on what’s happening now. It’s crucial to see and to label them with the question: “What is my most believed thought right now?”
Ezra Bayda
We all hope for success. We hope for health. We hope for enlightenment. We have all sorts of things we hope for. All hope, of course, is about sizing up the past and projecting it into the future.
However, anyone who sits for any length of time sees that there is no past and no future except in the mind. There is nothing but self, and self is always here, present. It’s not hidden. We are racing around like mad trying to find something called self, this wonderful hidden self. Where is it hidden? We hope for something that’s going to take care of this little self because we do not realize that already we are self.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
