The mind always takes us to the past or the future. In the present, the mind cannot exist. In the present, there is no need, no use of the mind. One is only aware. By focusing the mind long enough on the present, the mind automatically dissolves.
112 Meditations, Ranjit Chaudhri
In the Buddhist lineage, knowledge is not handed down like an antique. One teacher experiences the truth of the teachings and hands it down as an inspiration to his students. That inspiration wakens the student who passes it on further. The teachings are seen as always up to date, they are not thought of as “ancient wisdom”.
It is like a recipe for bread. Each baker must apply his general knowledge of how to bake bread, but each time it is cooked completely fresh.
Jane Hope and Borin Van Loon
Introducing Buddha: A graphic guide
The present moment is the only moment available to us and it is the door to all other moments.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.
-Richard Bach
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
― Bil Keane
Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.
-Og Mandino
Surrender to what is.
Let go of what was.
Have faith in what will be.
-Sonia Ricotti
I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Taoists have a famous teaching about an empty boat that rams into your boat in the middle of a river. While you probably would not be angry at an empty boat, you might well become enraged if someone were at its helm.
The point of the story is that the parents who did not see you, the other kids who teased you as a child, the driver who aggressively tailgated you yesterday – are all in fact empty, rudderless boats. They were compulsively driven to act as they did by their own wounds, therefore they did not know what they were doing and had little control over it.
Just as an empty boat that rams into us is not targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain.
Until we realize this, we will remain prisoners of our grievance, our past, and our victim identity, all of which keep us from opening to the more powerful currents of life and love that are always flowing through the present moment.
Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Oprah Winfrey
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it will be.
Marcel Pagnol