"A lot of the poetic discipline boils down to getting tired of yourself, and I really believe that. When you get tired of yourself, then you change." 

~ David Whyte

"That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember."

~ Ted Hughes

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.

~ Epictetus

The simple act of honouring one’s need for time and space, between the competing parts of our day, is age old.

"What I propose is that we take the concept of physical fitness and just move it over wholesale into the realm of the benefits of meditation....It seems to me that now, with the way we understand the benefits of meditation, we're pretty much where we were in the 1960's with physical fitness."

~ Kenneth Folk

"Whatever is newly born needs a name and when we are more and more  welcomed by the silence, naming becomes our job. We have to notice, to bless with attention the beasts before us, both the rough and the smooth."

~ John Tarrant

nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore

How can we ever know the difference we make to the soul of the earth? Where the infinite stillness of the earth meets the passion of the human eye, invisible depths strain towards the mirror of the name.

In the word, the earth breaks silence. It has waited a long time for the word. Concealed beneath familiarity and silence, the earth holds back and it never occurs to us to wonder how the earth sees us. Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there?

~ John O'Donohue

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

~ Erica Jong

yù yī - 玉衣 

n. the desire to see with fresh eyes, and feel things just as intensely as you did when you were younger—before expectations, before memory, before words.

Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination.

~ Leslie Jamison

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you're in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

~ Mary Oliver

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

"The moment of awakening reveals two kinds of self-experience." ~ Evan Thompson

Let it come closer, let it engulf you if it must.
Until there is no division between self and sadness.
Until you cannot call it sadness at all. 
Until there is only intimacy. 

~ Jeff Foster

Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls. And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see."

~ Elif Shafak

On a mindfulness retreat, Anderson Cooper puts down the microphone and learns to love silence, as well as life without a cell phone.

"How do I understand that I am enough for the mere fact that I exist?"

~ Jennifer Moon

"In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still."

~ Pico Iyer

"In a groundbreaking program, Oregon police officers are learning mindfulness techniques to deal with stress, be more focused on the job, and connect more meaningfully with the people they serve."