We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.
Interpretation
Mindfulness allows us to recognize our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort.
This quote by Sharon Salzberg emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in understanding our emotional responses to experiences. It suggests that by observing our instinctual reactions to cling to joy and repel pain, we can cultivate a deeper awareness of our thought patterns and behaviors, ultimately leading to greater emotional balance and resilience.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, to illustrate the practice of mindfulness.
It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.
Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.
To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act...It is a radical change of view that liberates us so that we know who we are most deeply and can acknowledge our enormous ability to love.
The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
You've got your passion. You've got your pride. But don't you know that only fools are satisfied? Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true.
Be vigilant; guard your mind against negative thoughts
Character is the essence of all that a man has seen in life and regards as high and exalted. Character is like truth: the substance of the things that a man has forgotten but the substance of the things that are worth remembering in life.
The worst advice? 'Don't listen to the critics.' I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they're telling you something is broken that you can fix.
To know when to be generous and when firmβthat is wisdom.
Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
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