nirvanaiscool

[nirvanaiscool]

Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew.

The Four Generations of Chang E - Zen Cho

[nirvanaiscool]

are u ever sick w longing. and i don't just mean romantic longing. i mean longing for a place you barely get to see, longing for friends you no longer have, longing for feelings you might have left behind in your childhood, longing for creativity, longing for a rich and more expansive life, longing for less inhibition. longing for more passion. longing for ur life to be so incandescent w something it thaws all the frost in ur bones. are u ever so consumed w it it rends ur heart in two. do u understand me

#i always see posts like this and go #''yes yes the persistent sense of lack and suffering that ranges from minor to soul-crushing but always remains #we all know what dukha and samsara are'' #and i have to remember that this. is not applicable to everyone and not everyone would think like this #but like this is dukha on the head

[nirvanaiscool]

[nirvanaiscool]

“There is a Zen story about a student who felt he hadn’t really received the deepest essence of his master’s teaching, and so he went to question him. His master replied, “On your way here, did you see the cypress in the courtyard?” Perhaps the student was not yet very mindful. The master was saying that if, on the way to see our teacher, we go past a cypress tree or a beautiful plum tree in blossom and we don’t really see it, then when we arrive in front of our teacher, we won’t see our teacher either. We shouldn’t miss any opportunity to really see our cypress tree. There are wonders of life we walk past every day, and yet we haven’t truly seen them. What is the cypress tree on the path you take to work every day? If you cannot even see the tree, how can you see your loved ones? How can you see God?”

—

Thich Nhat Hanh, in “The Art of Living”.

Thich Nhat Hanh gems

[nirvanaiscool]

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

[nirvanaiscool]

Astrakhan Nature Reserve, Russia by Fedor Lashkov

[nirvanaiscool]

I heard so many people talk about romanticizing your life and at first it was annoying but then I was eating an apple and it was red and sweet and I was making an effort to conciously and slowly enjoy my apple because that's what my therapist told me to try to be more in the moment and it was the best apple I ever ate. I ate it slow and really payed attention to the sweetness and the sourness and I was sitting outside under some trees and there was a breeze and I thought: This is a perfect moment, and one day I will wish I had the opportunity to sit here and conciously eat this apple and be happy. Anyways. Try making a big deal out of small things.

#🤔🤔🤔

[nirvanaiscool]

English added by me :)

[nirvanaiscool]

[nirvanaiscool]

In the remote Buddhist monastery of Haeinsa is preserved the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete corpus of Buddhist doctrinal texts in the world, dating from 1251.

[nirvanaiscool]

why is life sooooooo beautiful and profound and sad and completely empty

#🤔🤔🤔

[nirvanaiscool]

[nirvanaiscool]

does anyone have the post thats a leonard cohen quote talking about being empty

[nirvanaiscool]

[nirvanaiscool]

Stages

1. I am watching the sunrise.

2. I am the sunrise.

3. I am the watcher and the sun and the rising and the sunless sky and the ground below. I am the oceans I can't see and the fault lines of continents and the continents as well. I am the vastness between stars and between subatomic particles.

4. The sun is rising.

#zen

[nirvanaiscool]

i like to pretend i already died and asked god to send me back to earth so i can swim in lakes again and see mountains and get my heart broken and love my friends and cry so hard in the bathroom and go grocery shopping 1,000 more times. and that i promised i would never forget the miracle of being here

[nirvanaiscool]

The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.

Thích Nhat Hanh