“Happiness doesn’t lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap..."

~ Dennis Lehane

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

~ Dogen Zenji

Mindfulness practice doesn’t eliminate my personal narrative. It gradually changes my relationship to it.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?

~ Lisel Mueller

"The problem is that there's this big gap between who we are as a people and how our politics expresses itself."

~ Barack Obama

We would be better off if we made peace with insecurity. We’re all vulnerable. It’s all illusion.

~ Simone Cambpell

All I have is all I need
And all I need is here now

The dilemmas related to attentional fitness are similar to the more familiar dilemmas that make physical fitness easier to discuss than to turn into habits. A mindfulness teacher has to sell you on the possible outcomes, but also has to steer you back again and again to the slippery path that leads to them.

when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?

~ Ellen Bass

When I first started practicing mindfulness, I saw internal words — aka verbal thoughts — as my opponents. Like most people, I thought the point was to not think. When verbal thoughts were present, I was obviously not. Start over. Try harder.

There's just one problem with this approach. It is normal for the mind to think in words.

"How’s this poem for its ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of fifteen short lines?"

"The dominant story of modernity has been progress. Although still hardwired into our institutions, that story has lost most of its plausibility. new genres are taking its place: apocalypse and nihilism. Apocalypse is the imminent and triumphant conclusion of our most cherished stories. Nihilism is their collapse. Both are stories about the end of stories."

~ David R. Loy

"I think one of my gifts is also one of my weaknesses. Which is, I have a kind of antenna for other people. My friends and my producers might disagree with me about this, but I think an antenna that picks up on what other people are feeling. But there's something good and bad about that."

~ Terry Gross

"The true material of knowledge is meaning. And the meaningful is the opposite of the trivial. And the only thing that we should have gleaned by skimming and skipping forward is really trivia."

~ Maria Popova

Me — a teenager?
If she suddenly stood here now, before me,
would I need to treat her as near and dear,
although she’s strange to me, and distant?
Shed a tear, kiss her forehead
for the simple reason
we share a birthdate?

~ Wisława Szymborska

"When you feel the sting of separation inside, simply turn inwardly and intuitively around one hundred and eighty degrees and there will be your innocence, your beauty, your completeness. It may seem impossible, but give it a try until you reconnect with what in truth you never lost."

~ Adyashanti

"The significance of the labyrinth is that it forces you — in order to get to the center — to go around the entire space. And familiarity with the entire path is very important when we’re walking a path."

~ Soryu Scott

"The choice isn’t between religion and the secular world, as it is now — the challenge is to learn from religions so we can fill the secular world with replacements for the things we long ago made up religion to provide. The challenge begins here."

~ Alain de Botton