...found this cool Thich Nhat Hanh quote, and almost immediately decided it was gonna be in the next Yoga for Cynics post....since then, have spent a helluva lotta time trying to write stuff to go with it...which hasn’t been working out so well...
...two nights ago, the weather changed, bringing cold, persistent rain, and an equally persistent pain in the forehead...and I wasn’t feeling all too motivated or inspired before that, either....so, then, maybe half an hour ago, decided to just use the quote, make it the entire post...but maybe throw in a photo so there’d at least be some original content...and, actually, found two I thought would work....one, of a flower, combined with the quote, would’ve ended up looking like a motivational poster...
...truth be told, I hate those things....better, I think, to be honestly negative than dishonestly positive....then, the other one, kind of a still life with my bare foot, would’ve come off more like one of those cynical demotivational posters that’ve been cropping up on the interwebs lately like fart jokes at a drunken wake...and that really wasn’t what I was going for, either....after all the postmodern irony of the past few decades, I sometimes wonder if we mightn’t need to be painfully sincere for at least an epoch or two to right the balance...though, admittedly, I’m not gonna be the one to start that movement...
...right now I’m lying on the floor...typing with one hand whilst my head rests on the other...really oughtta be getting to bed...but ate dinner too late...though that was the result of going to a jazz concert at the Art Museum...Sonny Fortune...used to play sax and flute with Miles Davis...which isn’t bad for a cold, rainy night...
...lately, I’ve been studying mindfulness...but I keep getting distracted...which is not to say that it isn’t all worthwhile...
If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now.
Thich Nhat Hanh
12 comments:
If the mood strikes, I'd love to see a pic of that flower, between the toes of your bare foot, maybe accompanied by an honestly positive post. (Don't make that face...I know you've written honestly positive posts before!) Seriously, I do hope you post the flower and foot pics sometime.
I'm glad you had a concert to temper this crappy weather...I think it's going to be with us through the weekend...splash and brrrr.
Another skywatch-worthy pic. Love that cloud up there and your landscape looks a little like that at the ocean...all those low shrubs. Do I see a hint of laptop?
And I think I've said before how much I like Thich Nhat Hanh's stuff. A very nice quote...so simple, kinda.
Geesh, I'm wordy for 3 a.m. G'nite drjay...loved this post.
...and again right now too.
News flash for you: you're human! Yeah! I hear your struggle, and it's okay to struggle. We are people on earth. That's what we do.
It sounds like you are measuring the human you with a beautiful spiritual ideal. And it is also beautiful to reach, but it is also great to be human.
Yup, that's a great quote.
Very effective to let us into your mind and drop the quote at the very end.
Love your take on motivational posters.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
Can't I be at peace a bit later on? The dog across the road is going off and I can feel my hackles rising. I'm sure later on this afternoon would be good. It'll be warm and I'll just be lazing around anyway. How about I be at peace with going off back at him?
Wise words but it so easily slips away in our human environment.
simple but not easy, as I tell my students. and once you know in your bones how exquisitely easy it it, that's liberation.
simple.
wow, I gotta say ... I don't like that quote. LOL
I really don't.
Isn't being at peace a process? I mean if I was at the destination then what the hell would I do?
But then again, what do I know.
I hope you feel better. The quote is very nice, but it's not like we have a "peace" switch we can just flip. At least not always.
Hi, Lana.
I can see what you mean. I actually didn't read the quote that way myself.
I took it to mean not that one can switch on an "inner peace" button, but rather that focusing on the present moment is more likely to lead to inner peace than the past or the future.
What do you think?
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
Can't you be mindful of how distracted you are? Mindfulness isn't some other worldly thing, and it doesn't preclude lapses in concentration. See where your thoughts wander.
RB,
I agree. I think that's a critical observation you're making. The real breakthrough in mindfulness comes when we realize that NOTHING is excluded.
We may be gently guiding our mind to focus on a single point, but calmly witnessing where our mind goes instead is just as important as the single point itself.
One technique I like is to make my single point of focus my wandering mind itself! You know what happens, of course.
Since your wandering mind is your single point focus, and you can't really stick to a single point focus for very long, your mind paradoxically goes blank, which is kind of what you were after in the first place.
Thanks for your insight.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
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