YOGA PILATES ROLLER
“The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being, but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me. ”
May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.
May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free.
May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not be indifferent.
“These meditations help us water the seeds of joy and happiness in our consciousness store. How can we touch true joy in every moment of our lives? How can we live in a way that brings a smile, the eyes of love, and happiness to everyone we encounter? Use your talent to find ways to bring happiness to yourself and others… Meditative joy has the capacity to nourish our mindfulness, understanding, and love. Try to live in a way that encourages deep happiness in yourself and others. “I vow to bring joy to one person in the morning and to help relieve the suffering of one person in the afternoon.” Ask yourself, “Who can I make smile this morning?” This is the art of creating happiness.” ”
-from Nourishing Happiness by Thich Nhat Hanh
“The body, then, is the field in which we grow and harvest our experiences, which may be positive or negative, painful or pleasant. While negative, painful experiences do not bring us immediate joy, they do so in the long run because – if we are wise – we relate to them rightly by regarding them as useful lessons. No experience need be devoid of merit. People have had major spiritual breakthroughs as a result of suffering and debilitating illness. Even physical pain does not have to be a merely unpleasant experience. In fact, it can sometimes be a doorway to ecstasy.”
“The most important thing to keep in mind when practicing meditation lying down is that it is about falling awake… There are many virtues to meditating lying down… We can surrender completely to the embrace of gravity, and let go into the floor or mat or bed and let it do the work… In practicing dropping into the embrace of gravity itself, we are more motivated and more willing to drop unconditionally into now, to bring a radical and open- hearted acceptance to whatever we find is going on in our minds and our bodies and our lives in any moment or on any given day, in a word, to be and let go.”
“I find it useful to meet each moment freshly, as a new beginning, to keep returning to an awareness of NOW over and over again, and let a gentle but firm perseverance stemming from the discipline of the practice keep me at least somewhat open to whatever is arising and behold it, apprehend it, look deeply into it, and learn whatever it might be possible to learn as the nature of the situation is revealed in the attending.
“Meditation is a way of being, not a technique… Meditation is not relaxation spelled differently… We might say that meditation is really a way of being appropriate to the circumstances one finds oneself in, in any and every moment. It is the non-clinging, and therefore the clear perceiving, and the willingness to act appropriately within whatever circumstances are arising that constitute this way of being that we are calling meditation.”
“To integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation. The violence and stress, the challenges and distractions of modern life make this integration even more urgently necessary.”
NO MUD, NO LOTUS “If you look deeply into a flower, you see that a flower is made only of nonflower elements. In that flower there is a cloud. Of course we know a cloud isn’t a flower, but without a cloud, the flower can’t be. If there’s no cloud, there’s no rain, and no flower can grow. You don’t have to be a dreamer to see a cloud floating in a flower. It’s really there. Sunlight is also there. Sunlight isn’t flower, but without sunlight no flower is possible.
If we continue to look deeply into the flower, we see many other things like the earth and the minerals. Without them a flower cannot be. So it’s a fact that flower is made only of nonflower elements.
A flower can’t be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with everything else. You can’t remove the sunlight, the soil, or the the cloud from the flower.”
