We all have well-established habits of thought, emotion, reaction and judgement,
and without the keen awareness of practice, we’re just acting out these patterns.
When they arise, we’re not aware they’ve arisen.
We get lost in them, identify with them, act on them
— so much of our life is just acting out patterns.
Joseph Goldstein
Can you accept the moments of anger and fear as guests,
be willing to receive them with kindness
without feeling obliged to serve them a five-course meal?
Christina Feldman
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
The Red Queen, in Through the Looking Glass
photo trishna datta
Above all, don’t wish to become a future Buddha;
Your only concern should be,
As thought follows thought,
To avoid clinging to any of them
Dogen
Smile,
breathe,
and go slowly.
Thich Nhat Hanh
O snail
climb Mount Fuji
but slowly slowly
Kobayashi Issa, 1763 – 1828, Japanese Buddhist priest and poet
Many of us have been convinced – by our society, by our own experiences in life, and by our own logic, that we cannot trust our own natural state of being. We turn away from ourselves and our experiences. In mindfulness practice we are learning not to destroy or control our feelings, but to discover them and be present with them. We begin to see how they work when we enter fully into them and give them room. We begin to see how we create our emotional lives and reactions. In this process, we learn to trust awareness and direct presence more and more deeply. As we explore the layers of our fear, our trust expands into wider and wider circles of who we are. The process of awakening can be understood as ever-widening circles of trust. …… Fearlessness is not necessarily the absence of fear. It is a positive quality that can exist side by side with fear, overcoming the limitations arising out of fear.
Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at hand
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