A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
Throw the ball at the wall. Catch. Repeat. That’s the activity. But within that simplicity lies a calming that can help you feel relaxed and centred.
It’s meditative: the rhythm-throw, bounce, catch-creates the same focused attention as a breathing meditation. Your mind quiets because it’s occupied with simple repetition, not because you’re forcing it quiet.
Steve McQueen and his ball and glove, The Great Escape
Another trait of consumerism that thrives in the youth culture is that antipathy to so-called "drudgery" that has made us, with the help of salesmen and advertisers, a nation of suckers. This is the pseudoaristocratic notion, early popularized in America, that one is too good for the fundamental and recurring tasks of domestic order and biological necessity; to dirty one's hands in the soil or to submerge them for very long in soapy water is degrading and brutalizing. With one's hands thus occupied, the theory goes, one is unlikely to reach those elusive havens of "self-discovery" and "self-fulfillment"; but if one can escape such drudgery, one then has a fair chance of showing the world that one is really better than all previous evidence would have indicated.
-Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural & Agricultural
Regular meditation will support better sleep. Better sleep will allow deeper and more profound meditation.
44. Make the best of today. Those who aim instead at tomorrow's plaudits fail to remember that future generations will be nowise different from the contemporaries who so try their patience now, and nowise less mortal. In any case, can it matter to you how the tongues of posterity may wag, or what views of yourself it may entertain?
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eight
8. Look at the inmost causes of things, stripped of their husks; note the intentions that underlie actions; study the essences of pain, pleasure, death, glory; observe how man's disquiet is all of his own making, and how troubles come never from another's hand, but like all else are creatures of our own opinion.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Twelve
30. Look down from above on the numberless herds of mankind, with their mysterious ceremonies, their diverse voyagings in storm and calm, and all the chequered pattern of their comings and gatherings and goings. Go on to consider the life of bygone generations; and then the life of all those who are yet to come; and even at the present day, the life of the hordes of far-off savages. In short, reflect what multitudes there are who are ignorant of your very name; how many more will have speedily forgotten it; how many, perhaps praising you now, who will soon enough be abusing you; and that therefore remembrance, glory, and all else together are things of no worth.
-Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, Book Nine
7. Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six
3. Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six
36. Observe how all things are continually being born of change; teach yourself to see that Nature's highest happiness lies in changing the things that are, and forming new things after their kind. Whatever is, in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it. Nothing can become a philosopher less that to imaging that seed can only be something that is planted in the earth of the womb.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four
What I eventually figured out—not that it ever seems to get particularly easy—is that other people's negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them. And you have to allow other people their problems. This in one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
. . . Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security. This separation cannot be bridged over, there is no ritual, no discipline, no sacrifice that can carry you across it; there is no savior, no Master, no guru who can lead you to the real or destroy the separation. The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
................................................Julian
47. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. If the cause of the trouble lies in your own character, set about reforming your principles; who is there to hinder you?
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book Eight
Sometimes, those focused on remaining calm and contained are not always learning the skills necessary to perform, to function in the world. They may be stable and not raise their voice in the kitchen, but they don't know how to make salad dressing. They may meditate steadfastly but not develop their communication skills. While busy generating calm, beautiful states of mind, they are not developing the skills, capacities, and practices that could actually and realistically manifest delicious food or wholesome relationships.
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe: cooking as a spiritual practice
Nobody is surprised when a fig tree brings forth figs. Similarly, we ought to be ashamed of our surprise when the world produces its normal crop of happenings. A physician or a shipmaster would blush to be surprised if a patient proves feverish, or a wind contrary.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8:15
Joy for the human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, distain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In summary, he told me, you want to exert effort in meditation practice but not more than necessary: “A bird flaps its wings and then soars on momentum, and doesn’t flap again until it needs to.”
If you spend time in Buddhist meditation settings you’ll hear variants of this advice frequently offered to “achiever” personalities who mistakenly think the more fierce their effort, the more plentiful their likely results. “Don’t try so hard to make something happen” “Soften your gaze” “Ease up” All different ways of getting at the simple but hard-to-follow guidance: Just relax.
Relaxation, as Tim Gallwey says, happens only when allowed, not as a result of “trying” or “making.”
Test for yourself your capacity for the good man's life; the life of one content with his allotted part in the universe, who seeks only to be just in his doings and charitable in his ways.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4:25
Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six
It may be wise to question whether we should always be living in the moment and whether this is the best way to foster creative thinking. Finding this ‘middle way’ between mindfulness and mind wandering can help us enjoy the optimal benefits of both ways of thinking. Mindfulness helps us truly see what’s around us—a skill of paramount importance in life and art—but it must be balanced with giving the mind space to dream, fantasize, and simply roam free.
-as cut and pasted from here
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