From A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967) by Martin Luther King
"In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, DC and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, AL......Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Learn by doing
From Grayson by Lynne Cox
"Sometime it's the process of doing that makes things clear. If we don't start, we never know what could have been. Sometimes the answers we find while searching are better or more creative than anything we could have imagined before."
"Sometime it's the process of doing that makes things clear. If we don't start, we never know what could have been. Sometimes the answers we find while searching are better or more creative than anything we could have imagined before."
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Lighten up!
From Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron
"Being able to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind, and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet. For example, you can hear the slogan "Always maintain a joyful mind" and start beating yourself over the head for never being joyful. That kind of witness is a bit heavy.
This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives--including practice--this goal-oriented, we're going-to-do-it-or-else attitude, is the world's greatest killjoy. There's no sense of appreciation because we're so solemn about everything. In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed. So lighten up. Don't make such a big deal.
When you aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you. Happiness is not required, but being curious without a heavy judgmental attitude helps. If you are judgmental, you can even be curious about that.
"Being able to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind, and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet. For example, you can hear the slogan "Always maintain a joyful mind" and start beating yourself over the head for never being joyful. That kind of witness is a bit heavy.
This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives--including practice--this goal-oriented, we're going-to-do-it-or-else attitude, is the world's greatest killjoy. There's no sense of appreciation because we're so solemn about everything. In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed. So lighten up. Don't make such a big deal.
When you aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you. Happiness is not required, but being curious without a heavy judgmental attitude helps. If you are judgmental, you can even be curious about that.
Our shelter in the storm
I bought Mary Pipher's book after hearing her speak at the Palo Alto Mother's Symposium in Winter 2007. With a little country in her voice she told stories about families, about anger between partners, about adolescents who rebel, about groups of people struggling to stick together. A therapist looking at the world through the eyes of an anthropologist, she related these problems to larger cultural stresses--to the way the culture presses down on families and endangers the tender shelter we have among each other.
Here's a piece from her book.
From The Shelter of Each other by Mary Pipher
"Families are our shelter from the storm, our oldest and most precious institution and our last great hope. Families were once powerful institutions, strong enough to withstand assaults. But now almost every force in our culture works against families.....
Our culture of consumption has thoroughly confused most people about how to live in families. We live in the United States of Advertising and many therapists have inadvertently played a ert in the spread of existential flu. Advertisers and pop psychology dovetail to produce a certain kind of adult--one who is shallow, self-absorbed, concerned about inadequacies.
Popular psychology has impoed that if one's intimate relationships are in order, life will be fine. But the situation is more complex than that. People cannot be whole and healthy unless they connect their lives to something larger than their own personal happiness. Freud postulated a great need for sex; I say our greatest human need is for love. We need to be reconnected with one another.
Therapists can train families to look at their culture with they eyes of anthropologists. We can help them to examine the effects of technology on the lives of their family and to make conscious choices about what technology to keep and reject. Psychologists can be what Donald Meichenbaum called "purveyors of hope." And we can encourage people to form a "tiospaye" for the families around them. The new millennium will be about restoring community and rebuilding the infrastructure of families. We need to take back our streets and our living rooms."
Here's a piece from her book.
From The Shelter of Each other by Mary Pipher
"Families are our shelter from the storm, our oldest and most precious institution and our last great hope. Families were once powerful institutions, strong enough to withstand assaults. But now almost every force in our culture works against families.....
Our culture of consumption has thoroughly confused most people about how to live in families. We live in the United States of Advertising and many therapists have inadvertently played a ert in the spread of existential flu. Advertisers and pop psychology dovetail to produce a certain kind of adult--one who is shallow, self-absorbed, concerned about inadequacies.
Popular psychology has impoed that if one's intimate relationships are in order, life will be fine. But the situation is more complex than that. People cannot be whole and healthy unless they connect their lives to something larger than their own personal happiness. Freud postulated a great need for sex; I say our greatest human need is for love. We need to be reconnected with one another.
Therapists can train families to look at their culture with they eyes of anthropologists. We can help them to examine the effects of technology on the lives of their family and to make conscious choices about what technology to keep and reject. Psychologists can be what Donald Meichenbaum called "purveyors of hope." And we can encourage people to form a "tiospaye" for the families around them. The new millennium will be about restoring community and rebuilding the infrastructure of families. We need to take back our streets and our living rooms."
Become a resevoir of joy and freshness
From Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
"If you take good care of yourself, you help everyone. You stop being a source of suffering to the world, and you become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Everything they do, they do for everyone."
"If you take good care of yourself, you help everyone. You stop being a source of suffering to the world, and you become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Everything they do, they do for everyone."
Monday, October 29, 2007
Happiness is a habit
From The Science of Happiness by Stefan Klein
"To live wisely requires the ability to perceive, guide and foresee our emotions. Feelings of happiness aren't a coincidence but the consequence of right thoughts and actions--a concept which modern neuroscience, ancient philosophy, and Buddhism...all agree.
We in the West typically emphasize the value of the correct decision: if only we were to make the right choice at this or that fork in the road, everything would improve. But according to the traditions of Buddhism and the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome, it is more important to anchor ourselves in good habits, because these form the mind. We should want to change ourselves rather than our circumstances. The rest will come, because with a mind that is prepared for happiness, we will automatically seek out those situations that make us happy.
The importance each of us gives to the conscious choice is in the end a matter of faith. But two things are certain. First, our sense of happiness depends much more on the ways in which the brain perceives than on external circumstances; and second, occasional efforts arent sufficient to change our ways of perceiving. If the brain is to be rewired, repetition and habit are indespensible. And they, in turn, depend on a willingness to make an effort.
People are willing to go to great lengths when it concerns status, career, or their children's development. But when it concerns happiness in everyday life, they can be oddly stingy with their energy. And yet, the way to happiness is quite straight forward: 'The actual secrets of the path to happiness are determination, effort, and time,' explains the Dalai Lama.
To this science can only assent."
"Three insights stand on solid ground and turn up again and again in different contexts.
First, positive feelings can drive out negative ones.
Second, although no happiness lasts forever, we can see to it that we experience more moments of happiness than before and that the pleasure they give us lasts longer.
Third, less important than what we experience, is how we experience it."
"To live wisely requires the ability to perceive, guide and foresee our emotions. Feelings of happiness aren't a coincidence but the consequence of right thoughts and actions--a concept which modern neuroscience, ancient philosophy, and Buddhism...all agree.
We in the West typically emphasize the value of the correct decision: if only we were to make the right choice at this or that fork in the road, everything would improve. But according to the traditions of Buddhism and the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome, it is more important to anchor ourselves in good habits, because these form the mind. We should want to change ourselves rather than our circumstances. The rest will come, because with a mind that is prepared for happiness, we will automatically seek out those situations that make us happy.
The importance each of us gives to the conscious choice is in the end a matter of faith. But two things are certain. First, our sense of happiness depends much more on the ways in which the brain perceives than on external circumstances; and second, occasional efforts arent sufficient to change our ways of perceiving. If the brain is to be rewired, repetition and habit are indespensible. And they, in turn, depend on a willingness to make an effort.
People are willing to go to great lengths when it concerns status, career, or their children's development. But when it concerns happiness in everyday life, they can be oddly stingy with their energy. And yet, the way to happiness is quite straight forward: 'The actual secrets of the path to happiness are determination, effort, and time,' explains the Dalai Lama.
To this science can only assent."
"Three insights stand on solid ground and turn up again and again in different contexts.
First, positive feelings can drive out negative ones.
Second, although no happiness lasts forever, we can see to it that we experience more moments of happiness than before and that the pleasure they give us lasts longer.
Third, less important than what we experience, is how we experience it."
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Is this all I've done with my life?
The next time you ask yourself
Is this all I have done with my life?
Take a moment and wonder
Who is this talking to me.
Is it possible
that this voice booms
from the outside.
That a 2x4 knocks you over
That the Twin Towers look down on you
That a speeding train runs you down?
That this is the voice of someone who is not you.
The next time he comes along with his
boom voice or his big stick
Go tell him to ask
your 100 year old oak tree
if this is all she's done with her life
Just stand there
In one place
giving shade
making oxygen
and being beautiful?
Or maybe he could take it up
with the family dog
What's her contribution after all?
What's she done to earn
her place at the table?
I'm sure he would ask them
if he could.
But he can't
and so
the tree stands
and the dog eats
answering
by not answering
the question
that can't be asked
of them.
Is this all I have done with my life?
Take a moment and wonder
Who is this talking to me.
Is it possible
that this voice booms
from the outside.
That a 2x4 knocks you over
That the Twin Towers look down on you
That a speeding train runs you down?
That this is the voice of someone who is not you.
The next time he comes along with his
boom voice or his big stick
Go tell him to ask
your 100 year old oak tree
if this is all she's done with her life
Just stand there
In one place
giving shade
making oxygen
and being beautiful?
Or maybe he could take it up
with the family dog
What's her contribution after all?
What's she done to earn
her place at the table?
I'm sure he would ask them
if he could.
But he can't
and so
the tree stands
and the dog eats
answering
by not answering
the question
that can't be asked
of them.
A Song for Your Supper
From
The Ainu [people] say that deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. Performance is currency in the deep world's gift economy. The "deep world" is of course the thousand million-year-old world of rock, soil, water, air and all living beings, all acting through their roles. "Currency" is what you pay your debt with. We all receive, every day, the gifts of the Deep World, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. How do we repay that gift? Performance. "A song for your supper.
I went on to tell her that i felt that non human nature is basically well-inclined toward humanity and only wishes modern people were more reciprocal, not so bloody. The animals are drawn to us, they see us as good musicians, and the think we have cute ears. The human contribution to the planetary ecology might be our entertaining eccentricity, our skills as musicians and performers, our awe inspiring dignity as ritualists--because that was seems to delight the watching wild world.
The Ainu [people] say that deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. Performance is currency in the deep world's gift economy. The "deep world" is of course the thousand million-year-old world of rock, soil, water, air and all living beings, all acting through their roles. "Currency" is what you pay your debt with. We all receive, every day, the gifts of the Deep World, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. How do we repay that gift? Performance. "A song for your supper.
I went on to tell her that i felt that non human nature is basically well-inclined toward humanity and only wishes modern people were more reciprocal, not so bloody. The animals are drawn to us, they see us as good musicians, and the think we have cute ears. The human contribution to the planetary ecology might be our entertaining eccentricity, our skills as musicians and performers, our awe inspiring dignity as ritualists--because that was seems to delight the watching wild world.
Get yourself out of the way
From Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
"The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act,
but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself, but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people."
"The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act,
but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself, but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people."
Thursday, September 27, 2007
All things humming with mystery
From The Road by Cormac McCarthy
"He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke"
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. they smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man the they hummed of mystery."
"He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke"
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. they smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man the they hummed of mystery."
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