Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.
AdyashantiRead
There is a very Simple Secret to being happy. Just let go of your 'demand' on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. You're Arguing with 'What Is' - Your demands keep you chained to the 'dream-state' of the conditioned mind. The desire to 'control'... is, ultimately, our unwillingness to just be awake.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happiness comes from relinquishing demands and accepting the present moment as it is.
This quote emphasizes that true happiness is achieved by letting go of our demands and desires for the present moment. When we cling to expectations, we create suffering for ourselves, as we are in constant conflict with reality. Accepting 'what is' allows us to awaken from our conditioned mindset and experience life more fully.
Themes
HappinessAcceptanceMindfulnessSufferingPresent Moment
In practice
Example use cases
During a mindfulness workshop, this quote can be used to explain the importance of letting go of expectations.
More from Adyashanti
All quotes →If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.
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Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.
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The willingness to not bypass illusion is very important. We come to nirvana by way of samsara. We come to see the true nature of things by seeing through the illusory nature of things. We don't come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don't come to clarity by avoiding confusion.
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Our illusions-the beliefs we hold on to-are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either. We need to see each moment of apparent bondage as an invitation to freedom. Then it becomes an act of love, an act of compassion, to stop running away.
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Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?
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We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
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But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.
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I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
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I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.
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I do not understand what the man who is happy wants in order to be happier.
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Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.
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