In the moment, now, what is possible? Living in the present, instead of the past and the future, is an ancient practice and a modern technique, adding perspective, calm, openness, and relaxation to our lives.
Live each day as if your life had just begun.
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world. Stand in your own dooryard and you have eight thousand miles of solid ground beneath you, and all the sidereal splendors overhead.
I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now.
There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence;
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived makes every
Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, and every
Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn.
The day I see a leaf is a marvel of a day.
How do I become still? By flowing with the stream.
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.
Empathy, I would say, is presence. Pure presence to what is alive in a person at this moment, bringing nothing in from the past.
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Breathe. Let go. Remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
Just where you are — that’s the place to start.
Impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage.
The journey of patience involves opening to what’s happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.
When egolessness arises, we recognize it as a fresh moment, a clear perception of a smell or a sight or a sound, a feeling of opening to emotions or thoughts.
Cultivating moment-to-moment curiosity, we find that peace dawns on us.
Acknowledge whatever arises without judgment, let the thoughts simply dissolve, and then go back to the openness of this very moment.
We ought to live each day as though
it were our last day here below.
But if I did, alas, I know
it would have killed me long ago.
One of the most powerful, and deeply spiritual, ways to work for social change is for us to take action in the present that embodies — right now! — the future vision that we seek
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.
