How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259
Interpretation
Pain is temporary, and despite its intensity, it does not last forever.
This quote reflects on the nature of pain, suggesting that while it can feel overwhelming and significant at the moment, it ultimately fades away. It highlights a human tendency to want to hold onto pain and give it lasting importance, but it reminds us that even our suffering is transient, inviting us to recognize the potential for healing and relief.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming hardship.
Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.
Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.
You are who you associate with. Look around at your five closest friends and that's who you are. If you don't want to be that person, you know what you gotta do.
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.
If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.
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