We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.
Interpretation
Mindfulness allows us to recognize our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort.
This quote by Sharon Salzberg emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in understanding our emotional responses to experiences. It suggests that by observing our instinctual reactions to cling to joy and repel pain, we can cultivate a deeper awareness of our thought patterns and behaviors, ultimately leading to greater emotional balance and resilience.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, to illustrate the practice of mindfulness.
It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.
Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.
To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act...It is a radical change of view that liberates us so that we know who we are most deeply and can acknowledge our enormous ability to love.
The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver: the diver needs several qualities: he must trust his rope and his life to the Friend's hand, he must stop breathing, and he must jump.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Remember this Saying, 'That the good Paymaster is Lord of another Man's Purse.' He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the Time he promises, may at any Time, and on any Occasion, raise all the Money his Friends can spare.
What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy - they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.
That person who is the hardest to forgive is the one who can teach you the greatest lessons. When you love yourself enough to rise above the old situation, then understanding and forgiveness will be easy. And you'll be free.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.