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.
Interpretation
Doing nothing allows us to confront our feelings instead of escaping from them.
The quote by Sharon Salzberg emphasizes the importance of taking time to pause and be still. In a world that often pressures us to stay perpetually busy, doing nothing serves as a significant act of self-care. It encourages us to step back from distractions and acknowledge our feelings and experiences, which we may often try to manipulate or avoid. This mindful approach can lead to greater awareness and emotional healing.
In practice
In a wellness seminar, when discussing the importance of mental health.
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.
The moment that we realize our attention has wandered is the magic moment of the practice, because that's the moment we have the chance to be really different. Instead of judging ourselves, and berating ourselves, and condemning ourselves, we can be gentle with ourselves.
Whoever desires to purify his heart, then let him prefer Allah to his desires
He has existed only, not lived, who lacks wisdom in old age.
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
We do not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth
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