When we can be centered in ourselves,
even for brief periods of time in the face of the pull of the outer world,
not having to look elsewhere for something to fill us up or make us happy,
we can be at home wherever we find ourselves,
at peace with things as they are, moment by moment.
Jon Kabat Zinn
The great Suzuki Roshi’s classic image on how meditation develops space in our lives and allows us work with whatever challenging thoughts arise:
The way to control your sheep or cow is
to give him a large, spacious meadow .
25% of Irish people check work emails while on holidays. 49% of Irish people between 25 and 34 check social media overnight if they can’t sleep.
Irish Times, Signs of the Times Survey 2019, April 27, 2019.
What is balance in a society whose skewing of time has it totally off-balance? What is balance in a culture that has destroyed the night with perpetual light and keeps equipment going twenty-four hours a day because it is more costly to turn machines on and of than it is to pay people to run them at strange and difficult hours? In the first place balance for us is obviously not a mathematical division of the day. For most of us our days simply do not divide that easily. In the second place, balance for us is clearly not equivalence. Because I have done forty hours of work this week does not mean that I will have forty hours of prayer and leisure. What it does mean, however, is that somehow I must make time for both. I must make time or die inside.
Joan Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily
People were always getting ready for tomorrow.
I didn’t believe in that.
Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
The problem is not necessarily working hard, the problem is working so hard and long without rest that we begin to imagine that we’re the ones making everything happen. We begin to feel a growing, gnawing sense of responsibility and grandiosity about how important our work is and how we can’t stop because everything is on our shoulders. We forget that forces much larger than we are, in fact, do most of the work.
Wayne Muller, A Time of Sacred Rest
Life is going to unfold however it does: pleasant or unpleasant, disappointing or thrilling, expected or unexpected, all of the above! What a relief it would be to know that whatever wave comes along, we can ride it out with grace. What Right Aspiration translates to in terms of daily action is the resolve to behave in a way that stretches the limits of conditioned response. Life is a terrific gym. Every situation is an opportunity to practice.
Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness”
Mindfulbalance 