A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
. . . Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security. This separation cannot be bridged over, there is no ritual, no discipline, no sacrifice that can carry you across it; there is no savior, no Master, no guru who can lead you to the real or destroy the separation. The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
................................................Julian
47. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. If the cause of the trouble lies in your own character, set about reforming your principles; who is there to hinder you?
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book Eight
Sometimes, those focused on remaining calm and contained are not always learning the skills necessary to perform, to function in the world. They may be stable and not raise their voice in the kitchen, but they don't know how to make salad dressing. They may meditate steadfastly but not develop their communication skills. While busy generating calm, beautiful states of mind, they are not developing the skills, capacities, and practices that could actually and realistically manifest delicious food or wholesome relationships.
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe: cooking as a spiritual practice
Nobody is surprised when a fig tree brings forth figs. Similarly, we ought to be ashamed of our surprise when the world produces its normal crop of happenings. A physician or a shipmaster would blush to be surprised if a patient proves feverish, or a wind contrary.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8:15
Joy for the human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, distain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In summary, he told me, you want to exert effort in meditation practice but not more than necessary: “A bird flaps its wings and then soars on momentum, and doesn’t flap again until it needs to.”
If you spend time in Buddhist meditation settings you’ll hear variants of this advice frequently offered to “achiever” personalities who mistakenly think the more fierce their effort, the more plentiful their likely results. “Don’t try so hard to make something happen” “Soften your gaze” “Ease up” All different ways of getting at the simple but hard-to-follow guidance: Just relax.
Relaxation, as Tim Gallwey says, happens only when allowed, not as a result of “trying” or “making.”
Test for yourself your capacity for the good man's life; the life of one content with his allotted part in the universe, who seeks only to be just in his doings and charitable in his ways.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4:25
Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six
It may be wise to question whether we should always be living in the moment and whether this is the best way to foster creative thinking. Finding this ‘middle way’ between mindfulness and mind wandering can help us enjoy the optimal benefits of both ways of thinking. Mindfulness helps us truly see what’s around us—a skill of paramount importance in life and art—but it must be balanced with giving the mind space to dream, fantasize, and simply roam free.
-as cut and pasted from here
29. For a life that is sound and secure, cultivate a thorough insight into things and discover their essence, matter, and cause; put your whole heart into doing what is just, and speaking what is true; and for the rest, know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Twelve
Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6:3
Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of what controlling power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2:4
4. Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set on it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never to your power again.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Two
47. Survey the circling stars, as though yourself were in mid-course with them. Often picture the changing and re-changing dance of the elements. Visions of this kind purge away the dross of our earth-bound life.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Seven
22. It is man's particular distinction to love even those who err and go astray. Such a love is born as soon as you realize that they are your brothers; that they are stumbling in ignorance, and not willfully; that in a short while both of you will be no more; and, above all, that you yourself have taken no hurt, for your master-reason has not been made a jot worse than it was before.
-Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, Book Seven
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