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Posts tagged ‘Mindfulness’

Oct 17

Charles Caleb Colton

October 17, 2012

There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

 

Aug 6

Only Feelings?

August 8, 2012

From Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s How to Solve Our Human Problems (p. 42)

Normally our need to escape from unpleasant feelings is so urgent that we do not give ourselves the time to discover where these feelings actually come from. Suppose that someone we have helped responds with ingratitude, or that our partner fails to return our affection, or that a colleague or boss continuously tries to belittle us and undermine our confidence. These things hurt, and our instinctive reaction is to try immediately to escape the painful feelings in our mind by becoming defensive, blaming the other person, retaliating, or simply hardening our heart. Unfortunately, by reacting so quickly we do not give ourselves the time to see what is actually going on in our mind. In reality, the painful feelings that arise on such occasions are not intolerable. They are only feelings, a few moments of bad weather in the mind, with no power to cause us any lasting harm. There is no need to take them so seriously. We are just one person among countless living beings, and a few moments of unpleasant feeling arising in the mind of just one person is no great catastrophe.

Just as there is room in the sky for a thunderstorm, so there is room in the vast space of our mind for a few painful feelings; and just as a storm has no power to destroy the sky, so unpleasant feelings have no power to destroy our mind. When painful feelings arise in our mind, there is no need to panic; we can patiently accept them, experience them, and investigate their nature and where they come from.