Michelle

“Even though some of you may experience some peace when you sit in meditation, don’t be in a hurry to congratulate yourselves. Likewise, if there is some confusion, don’t blame yourselves. If things seem to be good, don’t delight in them, and if they’re not good don’t be averse to them. Just look at it all, look at what you have. Just look, don’t bother judging. If it’s good, don’t hold
fast to it; if it’s bad, don’t cling to it. Good and bad can both bite, so don’t hold fast to them.”
― Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart: The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah

“Even if I lead the most stunted, lethargic life, I still have the feeling of being caught up in an unprecedented whirlwind that has to be slowed before I can do anything else. Trying to escape the busyness that arises from the emptiness of life by resorting to still more emptiness, that is the vicious circle that threatens us. Whereas in our colorless lives we need tranquility less than authentic activities, important and meaningful events, dazzling moments that prostrate us or transport us. Time, that great thief, is constantly stealing from us; but it is one thing to be robbed magnificently and to grow old in the awareness that one has lived a full and rich life, and it is another to be cheaply gnawed away, hour by hour, for things that we have not even known. Our contemporaries' hell is called platitude. The paradise they seek is called plenitude. Some have lived; the others have simply endured.”
― Pascal Bruckner, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy

“Become your own best friend, acquire self-esteem, think positively, dare to live in harmony, etc. - the multitude of books on the subject suggests that it isn't so easy. Happiness not only constitutes, along with the market in spirituality, the biggest industry of the age; it is also and very precisely the new moral order, and that is why depression is spreading and every rebellion against this slimy hedonism elicits unhappiness and distress. We are guilty of not being content, a problem for which we have to answer to everyone else and before our inner jurisdiction as well.”
― Pascal Bruckner

“Formerly irreconcilable enemies, morality and happiness have fused; today, it is being unhappy that is immoral; the superego has moved into the citadel of felicity and governs it with an iron hand. The end of culpability comes at the price of endless torment. Pleasure is no longer a promise but a problem. The idea of full satisfaction has replaced that of constraint, and it has in turn become a requirement that full satisfaction be achieved. Each of us is responsible for being in good shape, in a good mood, and no longer has to renounce anything; instead, we have to adapt to a process of improvement that rejects any resistance to change. Order has ceased to condemn us or deprive us; now it shows us, with maternal solicitude, how to fulfill ourselves.”
― Pascal Bruckner, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy