Complaining

See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.

It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim.

Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness

Eckhart Tolle

Cares drop away

Climb the mountains and get their glad tidings.

Nature’s peace will flow to you as the sunshine flows into the trees.

The winds blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,

while cares drop away from you

like the leaves of autumn

John Muir

Sunday Quote: a new loveliness

To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday,

otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.

Krisnamurti

Transformation

It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing.

Indeed, it is as essential to transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells.

Anxieties and doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person, but for the society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.

Joanna Macy

in your power

Marcus Aurelius reminding us that external events or people cannot corrupt our inner self — only our own choices and thoughts can.

It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being. 

If once you realize this, you will never lose it again.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5, section 16

Contentment

A noble lord once visited the monk Ryōkan in search of rare wisdom. Ryōkan said nothing. Instead, he took up his brush and composed a haiku. The lord read it, bowed in understanding, and quietly returned to his castle.

The wind gives me

Enough fallen leaves

To make a fire.

Ryōkan Taigu, 1758–1831