Spend a little time each day in stillness and silence, and you will discover the unmovable center of this revolving world. Don’t attempt to find stability in thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, perceptions, possessions, relationships—all are coming and going, like birth and death, like inhale and exhale. Your body, your mind, your friends, your family, your whole world is in constant flux. There is not one ounce of certainty in it.
Who knows which of us will be standing tomorrow?
Finance is just as fickle. Money can be lost as quickly as it is gained—check your stock portfolio, appraise you home!
Relationships are as fragile as human life, and as unpredictable as the human heart.
Intelligence, wit, strength, beauty, sexual prowess; all are fragile and temporary. Each can vanish easily with injury, disease, or simply with time and old age.
Don’t set yourself up for bitterness and cynicism by building your life on a moving foundation. Don’t put unrealistic expectations on things that change so easily.
Instead, fully cherish the entire circumference of your life like a passing sunset.
It’s the impermanence of dusk’s final light that beckons a certain urgency to cherish that brief moment of splendor.
So it is with our lives.
And at the same time, we can be aware of unchanging presences at the center of the moving world.
Awareness.
The tried and true way to cultivate Awareness is to invest a little time and energy each day in contemplation, stillness, and silence. The fruit of this simple practice is peace and a subtle inner smile that is your indelible gift to us all.
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