Tag: wellbeing

Holding inward and outward together

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Meditation11The awareness of the so-called outward and the inward movement of life is meditation. The simultaneous awareness of the total movement is meditation. If I am aware of the nature of my reactions, and movement of my reactions, naturally that awareness will result in freedom from the reaction. I cannot stop the reaction, because the reactions have been rooted in the subconscious, in the unconscious. I cannot prevent, I cannot renounce, I cannot check them. But if I am aware, simultaneously of the objective challenge, the subjective reactions and the causes of these reactions, then it results in freedom. Then the momentum of reaction will not carry me over with it, but I will be ahead of the reactions. I will not be a victim of my reactions, but I will see them as I see the objective challenge. That for me is meditation. All inclusive attention while moving in life.

Vimala Thakar, Mutation of Mind

The moon just shines

Karl Duffy2 Comments

P1000422The symbol for compassion is one moon shining in the sky while its image is reflected in one hundred bowls of water.  The moon does not demand, “If you open to me, I will do you a favor and shine on you.”  The moon just shines.  The point is not to want to benefit anyone or make them happy.  There is no audience involved, no “me” and “them.”  It is a matter of an open gift, complete generosity without the relative notions of giving and receiving.  That is the basic openness of compassion: opening without demand.  Simply be what you are.  Be the master of the situation.  If you will just “be,” then life flows around and through you.

Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism

Making time for each thing

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It is useless to force the rhythms of life. If I live with the anxiety to go fast, I will not live well. My addiction to speed will make me sick. The art of living is about learning how to give time to each and every thing. If I have sacrificed my life to speed, then that is impossible. Ultimately, slow means to take the time to reflect. It means to take the time to think. With calm, you arrive everywhere.

Carlo Petrini, Founder, The Slow Food movement

Inner strength

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cloudz

 

You are the sky.

Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Pema Chodron

Starting now

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dawn Jan 1There is only this moment in which you are either awake or not awake, causing suffering or not for yourself or others; therefore, the most skillful means for finding ultimate freedom is not to focus on some future aim but rather to liberate this moment. And by constantly repeating this process, you will gradually come to reside in freedom without it being anything special. There is only this time, and your only choice is to work with life just as it is at present.

Phillip Moffitt, Loving Life’s Questions

Dawn over the Alps, Jan 1, 2013

A little light

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Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say “How will the next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?” There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step that follows, with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let’s rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.

Henri Nouwen