wisdom

“In the midst of winter, I finally found, within me, an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus

“When you can find peace and joy staring at a wall, you can find it anywhere.” — Zen proverb

“It may seem difficult at first but everything is difficult at first.” — Miyamoto Musashi

“Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: It reduces him to his fighting weight.” — Josh Billings

“For a long time, it seemed to me that real life was about to begin- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be got through first, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then lie would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”- D’Souza

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”- Thich Nhat Hanh

“The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” — Thucydides

“But change is hard,” many a time we use this as an excuse to stay mired in some maladaptive behavior. How long do we ‘exist’ because ‘becoming’ is difficult? Far too often, we remain in the dark places of our lives because we fear the work that is required for true change. Or perhaps we do it because we fear failure, not understanding that failure is not fatal. Failure is a reason to work harder- to not abandon the pursuit of whatever noble end we seek.

Suffer in the right direction. You are worth the effort. Let us consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable for forward progression.

“The ancient sages slept without dreaming and awoke without anxiety. Their food was not fancy and their breathing was deep. The breath of a sage rises from the heels, while the breath of the common person comes only from the throat.” — Chuang Tzu

“We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason or doesn’t have a purpose. In this respect, it’s unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing, we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as on a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” — Alan Watts

“In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts.

They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds — which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air — the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and all the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance.”

— Francis Assikinack (Blackbird)

Hold the line.