I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life.
I only put down on paper what works for me, and since I started out as a human train wreck, the ways I’ve learned to be happy also work for others.
Diana frowns. “You’re taking me home, right? You just said you would.” “Hoink hoink! Of course, piglet. But I meant your real home.” “Which, last I checked,” says Diana acidly, “is in Los Angeles, California, United States of America, solar system, planet Earth.” “Hmm,” says the boar, hiccupping dreamily. “That’s what you think, darling. Tell me, can you say you’ve felt really at home at that address? Haven’t you been homesick your whole life?
Emotions are virtually always responses to thoughts. That’s great news, because while it’s impossible to control an emotion once a thought has triggered it, we can change our thoughts deliberately. We do this not by contradicting them, but by questioning them. EXPLANATION:.
What upsets people is not what happens to them, but their thoughts about what happens.
Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It’s blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else’s creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again.
My story is a love story, but only those who are tortured by love can understand what I mean.
The Indian sage Nisargadatta Maharaj once commented, “The only true statement the mind can make is ‘I do not know.
The extent to which people will defy nature to serve culture can be truly horrifying.
And, above all, please learn to trust your inner teacher, the burst of relaxation and freedom that rings through your whole body.
Believing things that aren’t true for us at the deepest level is the commonest way in which we lose our integrity. Then suffering arises – not as punishment, but as a signal that we’re being torn apart. The purpose of suffering is to help us locate our internal divisions, reclaim our reality, and heal these inner rifts.
A lot of things you believe to be impossible are actually well within your reach.
And if the whine and sting of purposelessness isn’t enough to shake us out of our sleepwalking, our subconscious minds will up the ante. They’ll summon the megafauna, the mental wild beasts we call mood states.
I’ve learned that the worst pain, fear, and torment I’ve ever experienced has only deepened my ability to experience joy. I feel this even when I’m hurting, because while pain and pleasure are mutually exclusive, pain and joy are not.
This was how I discovered the most powerful way I know to kill our own cowardice as we approach a gate to hell. We must pull our minds away from situations that exist only in our hopes and fears, and rivet our attention – all of it – on the present moment.
This is their journey. I’ll have my time to go through xyz, but now is not my time. Everyone gets their time.
To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided.
At the deepest level, you know what makes you happy and how to create your best possible life. That knowledge is coded into your very nature. But your nature is forever colliding with a force that can tear it apart: culture.
Contemplating integrity as a way of life is like deciding to leave your homeland and become a citizen of a new country: it involves a major identity.
Because our true nature is serious about restoring us to wholeness, it hauls out the one tool that reliably gets our attention: suffering.
If you don’t walk your true path, you don’t find your true people. You end up in places you don’t like, learning skills that don’t fulfill you, adopting values and customs that feel wrong.