What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? Our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.
The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.
Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Appreciation is a relaxing and peaceful state of mind. It creates a space in which we can accommodate the vicissitudes of life. Complaint, on the other hand, is frustrating and painful. There’s an element of anger and fixation involved. We are believing our thoughts, taking them to be real. Our attachment to the concept of how we want things to be is stressful, because that concept is always disintegrating. What we wanted to happen is not happening. We think complaining is going to get the world back on our track, but really it results in our being deaf, dumb and blind to the present moment. When we complain, we’re saying that the world needs to change in order for us to be okay. If only our parent or partner would behave differently, if only the food were better, if only there were less traffic, if only the service were quicker—then we’d be happy.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, No Complaints
The present moment, the only moment we have to feel or to think, is a hidden dimension for most of us. We are so absorbed with planning for the future or blaming people for what is over and done with that we lose the lives we are living. We die a thousand deaths wasting our energy on what was or what will be. We need to wake up a little more and liberate ourselves from our self-destructive habits — greed, hatred, racism and selfishness. There is no reason to starve for well-being.
Jon Kabat Zinn
It is a realization both simple and profound: genuine happiness does not come from accumulating more and more pleasant feelings. When we reflect on our lives and the many nice things we’ve experienced, have they provided us with lasting fulfillment? We know that they have not – precisely because they don’t last. The tremendous danger of this belief – that genuine happiness comes only from pleasant feelings – becomes a strong motivation to stay closed to anything unpleasant…. The transforming realization of meditative awareness is that happiness does not depend on pleasant feelings. In meditation and in our lives, it is not so important what particular experience arises. What’s important is how we relate to it.
Joseph Goldstein, A Heart full of Peace
Awareness is the basis, or what you might call the “support,” of the mind. It is steady and unchanging, like the pole to which the flag of ordinary consciousness is attached. When we recognize and become grounded in awareness, the “wind” of emotion may still blow. But instead of being carried away by the wind, we turn our attention inward, watching the shifts and changes with the intention of becoming familiar with that aspect of consciousness that recognizes Oh, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m thinking. As we do so, a bit of space opens up within us. With practice, that space — which is the mind’s natural clarity — begins to expand and settle.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
To gain composure at stressful moments, we can apply the mindfulness effort of letting go – abruptly shifting our attention from our thoughts to the immediacy of our physical environment. By simply being mindful in this way. we discover a visceral stillness, an “emotional space” of not knowing, like opening a door to an unfamiliar room or leaping from a diving board. When we are mindful in the immediate moment, the chaotic flood of emotions no longer view for our attention like a crowd of load, unruly voices. Instead they settle into a physical feeling, unclear and murky, but no less powerful – a vague softness around the heart or an openess in the throat.
Michael Caroll, At Times of Stress, Cultivate Stillness
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