All losses are sad. The end of an important relationship is also a death. When people fall out of love with each other, or when what seemed like a solid friendship falls into ruin, the hope for a shared future--a hope that provided a context and a purpose to life--is gone. [p. 149]

Sylvia Boorstein

Categorized in : Loss Falling In Love Important Relationships

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.

Sylvia Boorstein

buddhist acceptance mindfulness

I am thankful that thus far today I have not had any unkind thoughts or said any harsh words or done anything that I regret. However, now I need to get out of bed and so things may become more difficult.

Sylvia Boorstein

regret bed needs

Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you've had a rough day.

Sylvia Boorstein

spiritual talking sweet

The mind is like tofu. It tastes like whatever you marinate it in.

Sylvia Boorstein

tofu taste mind

Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control.

Sylvia Boorstein

surrender mean

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.

Sylvia Boorstein

meditation-practice life-changing heart

Imagine how our lives might be if everyone had even a bit more of the Wisdom that comes from seeing clearly. Suppose people everywhere, simultaneously, stopped what they were doing and paid attention for only as long as it took to recognize their shared humanity. Surely the heartbreak of the world's pain, visible to all, would convert everyone to kindness. What a gift that would be.

Sylvia Boorstein

pain kindness heart

It is our own pain, and our own desire to be free of it, that alerts us to the suffering of the world. It is our personal discovery that pain can be acknowledged, even held lovingly, that enables us to look at the pain around us unflinchingly and feel compassion being born in us. We need to start with ourselves.

Sylvia Boorstein

pain compassion discovery

Ultimately ... it's not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose.

Sylvia Boorstein

determine choices stories

May I meet each moment fully and meet it as a friend.

Sylvia Boorstein

moments may

If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.

Sylvia Boorstein

difficult-times grace mind

Suffering is the demand that experience be different from what it is.

Sylvia Boorstein

demand different suffering

The voice of Thich Nhat Hanh-friendly, patient, steadfast, confident, contemporary, and often witty-seems, to me, an intermediary big brother talking directly to me on every page saying, 'Look! It's right there in you,' the very wisdom that leads to compassion.

Sylvia Boorstein

compassion brother witty

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience. It isn't more complicated than that.

Sylvia Boorstein

acceptance mindfulness complicated

What if someone hurts you with a weapon? Wait. Think it over. You probably feel angry. That's normal. But wasn't it the stick striking your body that hurt you? Can you be angry at the stick? Of course not. Should you be angry at the wielder of the stick? Wouldn't it make more sense to be angry at the hatred in the mind of the stick wielder? If you think about it, isn't the end of hatred in the world what you want most of all? Why, then, would you add to it by giving energy to your anger? After all, it will pass on its own if left alone, especially if you respond to it with compassion.

Sylvia Boorstein

compassion hurt thinking

My father . . . used to say, 'I need my anger. It obliges me to take action.' I think my father was partly right. Anger arises, naturally, to signal disturbing situations that might require action. But actions initiated in anger perpetuate suffering. The most effective actions are those conceived in the wisdom of clarity.

Sylvia Boorstein

suffering father thinking

Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What's happening right now and what's coming up in me in response to what's happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.

Sylvia Boorstein

able moments mindfulness

Steadfast benevolence, sustained by the wisdom that anything other than benevolence is painful, protects the mind from all afflictions.

Sylvia Boorstein

affliction compassion mind

Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61]

Sylvia Boorstein

karma mean thinking

When the mind is clear, behavior is always impeccable.

Sylvia Boorstein

clear behavior mind