Live Your Life
"There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready."
~ Maurice Sendak
Small Wins and Deliberate Mediocrity
"Tiny goals, even absurdly tiny ones, can be an effective way to sneak under the radar of your mind, which always stands ready to procrastinate on, or otherwise resist, bigger ambitions: you might laugh at the idea of doing 15 seconds of exercise, but for exactly that reason, you’re also much less likely to resist it. (The next day, make it 20 seconds, and so on.)"
~ Oliver Burkeman
The Atomic Components of Narrative Elements
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?
An Act of Attention
All making is an act of attention and attention is an act of recognition and recognition is the something happening that is thought itself.
~ Ann Hamilton
Understanding Mindfulness
To be clear, this is in no way a new definition that is meant to disparage Jon Kabat-Zinn‘s widely disseminated description – Paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally – but more so an attempt to dismantle the concept into component parts so that we can better study it in the laboratory.
The Value of Concentration
Meditation and mindfulness: the words conjure images of yoga retreats and Buddhist monks. But perhaps they should evoke a very different picture: a man in a deerstalker, puffing away at a curved pipe, Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself. The world’s greatest fictional detective is someone who knows the value of concentration, of “throwing his brain out of action,” as Dr. Watson puts it. He is the quintessential unitasker in a multitasking world.
This is What I Found Through Practice
“The really important thing for me is that when I write about Zen and about meditation and about what I have found, I want people to be clear that I'm not saying this is what the Buddha said or this is what Buddhism says. I'm saying, this is what I think I found through practice that I've been helped through Zen to learn.”
~ Susan Blackmore