monday moment of zen

“people are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
 ~ abraham lincoln

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monday moment of zen

“life is glorious, but life is also wretched. it is both. appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. we feel connected. but if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. the gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. on the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. when you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. the wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. we'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. one inspires us, the other softens us. they go together.” 

~ pema chödrön

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monday moment of zen

"to understand pain is to accept it as nature's way of telling you that something needs to be changed in your present state of being on the physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual levels of consciousness."
~ dr kam yuen

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monday moment of zen

“[let] go of your attachments: your attachment to being right, to having total control, or to living forever. This process of letting go is integral to the process of becoming whole.”   

~ judith hanson lasater

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