And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter
the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

~ John O'Donohue

Everyone is doing their best, even when it seems like they are doing their worst.
Everyone is dreaming or having a nightmare, battling with pain you may never understand.
You don't have to condone their actions.
You may not be able to wake them up.
You don't have to like what happened.
Simply let go of the illusion
that it could have been any different.

~ Jeff Foster

"The serene isolation that can be felt in a crowded and often chaotic world." ~ Genevieve

"The world in front of me and the world 'inside' me are not merely adjacent, but overlapping; superimposed. A book feels like the intersection between these two domains – or like a conduit; a bridge; a passage between them." ~ Peter Mendelsund 

"Meditating on the body means meditating on body sensation, not mental images of the body."

~ Michael Taft

Mindfulness practice leads to better decision making due to the skills it develops over time.  It’s about paying attention to ordinary experience differently.

Whether we are giving or receiving care, we come face-to-face with time’s elasticity – how it seems to speed up and slow down.

Stories and our individual lives share the same elements: protagonists, antagonists, conflict, plot, action, climax, and resolution.  What are the atomic components that make these narrative elements possible? 

"The process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an easy thing to do."

~ Adyashanti

In the eyes of some experts, what seems like the simplest of acts — eating slowly and genuinely relishing each bite — could be the remedy for a fast-paced Paula Deen Nation in which an endless parade of new diets never seems to slow a stampede toward obesity.

~ Jeff Gordinier

Why is the sound of a mindfulness bell such a great warm up for any attentional fitness workout?

By default, most of us have developed a stunning and sophisticated repertoire for blocking out the world around us. We allocate the bulk of our attention inwardly toward the stories playing out in our minds.

“The brain processes musical nuance in many ways, it turns out. Edward W. Large, a music scientist at Florida Atlantic University, scanned the brains of people with and without experience playing music as they listened to two versions of a Chopin étude: one recorded by a pianist, the other stripped down to a literal version of what Chopin wrote, without human-induced variations in timing and dynamics.”

Our thinking is full of other people's voices.

If the sun isn’t actually menacing me or entertaining me, and the ground beneath my feet isn’t stationary, where am I supposed to find a safe place to make my home? Our nervous systems crave certainty and solidity and, in their absence, have created a complex process for representing stability.

"Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to do intensive formal meditation practice. Why should they? Isn’t there enough physical and emotional discomfort in ordinary life? Why intentionally seek it out?

But the monastery will come to each of us when we have to confront our fears, losses, compulsions and anxieties, or process the aftermath of trauma. The monastery comes to us in the form of emotional crisis, illness or injury, a phobia or a failed relationship. The question is whether we will be in a position to recognize and use it as such."

~ Shinzen Young

In order to see
what is right in front of our eyes,
we first have to recognize
we have gradually
become blind,
and then begin
the slow work of forgetting.