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If contentment does not arise within your mind, even if you have everything you could ever want, you’ll be like a beggar. Those who are content and rid of clinging are always rich, even without possessions. —Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye
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The times are urgent; let us slow down. - Bayo Akomolafe
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To listen totally, you must shut up. Really shut up. You are either listening or talking: it is impossible to do both at the same time. - Ajahn Brahm
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Many of us stagnate in lives that are going nowhere. We are either stuck in destructive patterns that undermine our happiness and snuff out our potential, or we run on a treadmill of routine that slowly kills off our dreams. - Shmuley Boteach
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Should you need motivation and inspiration to stay healthy, read the following sentences by Douglas Penick in his article "The Magic and Mystery of Aging" recently published in Tricycle Magazine:
"If you are reading this, your chances of ending up in a nursing home are just short of 50/50. That is to say, 4 out of 10 of Tricycle’s readers are likely to end their lives in institutional care. And if you began reading this at all, you may decide to stop now. Later, maybe, it will be time to consider such things. But as Meg Federico wrote, people have to make the most difficult decisions, plans concerning the last years of their lives, at a time they are least capable of doing so. Nonetheless, we will age, and something will happen to us. Atul Gawande, a distinguished surgeon and commentator on the care of the aged, describes the likely situation in which we who live in the Western post-industrial world will find ourselves ..."
The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies of a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimens, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers. —Being Mortal
"If you are reading this, your chances of ending up in a nursing home are just short of 50/50. That is to say, 4 out of 10 of Tricycle’s readers are likely to end their lives in institutional care. And if you began reading this at all, you may decide to stop now. Later, maybe, it will be time to consider such things. But as Meg Federico wrote, people have to make the most difficult decisions, plans concerning the last years of their lives, at a time they are least capable of doing so. Nonetheless, we will age, and something will happen to us. Atul Gawande, a distinguished surgeon and commentator on the care of the aged, describes the likely situation in which we who live in the Western post-industrial world will find ourselves ..."
The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies of a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimens, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers. —Being Mortal
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Imagine looking back on our lives after we die. We’ll see that so many things didn’t matter. - Homeless Kodo Sawaki
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We might be inclined to think that joyfulness is better than sadness. That is a very conventional human perspective: let’s be happy all of the time. Buddhism teaches us to embrace all emotions. There there will be difficulty and loss. And when there is difficulty and loss, it is appropriate to be sad. When sorrow arises, go with it. Observe it. Please pay attention to what it is like to experience loss. - Margaret Meloni
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There is far more love available to us in any given moment than we might be aware. And there is much, much more love in our hearts than we as adults have been conditioned to believe is appropriate to express. - Kate Johnson
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Loving kindness is the thought of wishing total happiness for others and putting that wish into practice. It is the thought of unconditioned, pure, and universal love towards all beings without attachment, self-centeredness, or expectation of rewards. - Tulku Thondup
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He gives what is beautiful,
hard to give,
does what is hard to do,
endures painful, ill-spoken words.
His secrets he tells you,
your secrets he keeps.
When misfortunes strike,
he doesn’t abandon you;
when you’re down & out,
doesn’t look down on you.
A person in whom these traits are found,
is a friend to be cultivated
by anyone wanting a friend.
- Anguttara Nikaya 7:35
hard to give,
does what is hard to do,
endures painful, ill-spoken words.
His secrets he tells you,
your secrets he keeps.
When misfortunes strike,
he doesn’t abandon you;
when you’re down & out,
doesn’t look down on you.
A person in whom these traits are found,
is a friend to be cultivated
by anyone wanting a friend.
- Anguttara Nikaya 7:35