Fixed expectations

Your definitions of desirable and undesirable, as well as good and bad, all come about

because you have defined how things need to be, in order for you to be OK

Michael Singer

Amid the mess

What if the path to happiness is not

bringing order into the mess of our lives

but instead relaxing amid the mess

and rejoicing in its aliveness and beauty

Haemin Sunim, Korean Zen Buddhist Teacher, When Things Don’t go your Way

Empty your boat

If you were crossing a river and an empty boat collides with your boat,
even if you were bad-tempered, you would not become very angry.
But if you see a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear, and if the shout was not heard, you will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing.

Yet if the boat were empty, you would not be shouting, and not be angry.

So, if you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,
no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you…
.

Such is the perfect person: their boat is empty.

Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

Sunday Quote: An older wisdom

The times are urgent,

Let us slow down

African Saying, quoted by Bayo Akomolafe in A Slower Urgency

with the heart

truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

Mary Oliver, Bone [extract]

A calm mind

The nearer a person comes to a calm mind

the closer they are to strength

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations