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According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine', selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill - will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this view can be traced all the evil in the world.
- Walpole Rahula
There is a concept of being entertained by other people or by scenes or by heroin or by T.V. programs or whatever that is a mistake. We may subjectively feel or we may interpret what’s happening as the other thing entertaining us, but really the only thing that entertains us is our own creative engagement with it and, without that creative engagement, nothing can entertain us. When people get this wrong idea about what entertainment is, that’s the kind of mistake where they think something mechanical, such as heroin, can entertain them. There are these clichéd situations where someone wins the lottery and is miserable. I think the generic trap that one can fall into in this sort of situation is by thinking that money can entertain you, not realizing that only you can entertain you.
- David Deutsch
“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
-Viktor E. Frankl
We appear to be living in an age where distinguishing between stimulation and happiness is of the utmost importance. While much of what makes us happy is stimulating, that which is stimulating does not necessarily make us happier.
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
-Helen Keller
If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you can start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.
-Steve Jobs
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
- Albert Schweitzer
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
― Tara Brach
You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
If you actually want something, you can have it. the question then is what do you mean by actually want? and the answer is, you reorient your life in every possible way to make the probability that that will occur as certain as possible. and that’s a sacrificial idea right? it’s like, you don’t get everything, obviously… but maybe you can have what you need, and maybe all you have to do to get it is ask; but asking isn’t a whim, or today’s wish. you have to be deadly serious about it.
-Jordan Peterson
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
- Carl Jung
The more I see, the less I know for sure.
- John Lennon
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or, more accurately, do what’s essential.
-Marcus Aurelius
I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself.
-Ram Dass
Visit https://palousemindfulness.com for a free mindfulness based stress reduction program. The site has great guided meditations and other resources.
The mind is an organ system which includes all of the physical being. The purpose of the mind is to survive itself through the passage of time and to this end it will do almost anything. Sometimes, one thing ranks higher in importance within the mind, and that is to be right.
- Ron Smothermon, M.D.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
-Carl Jung