Giedrius

“To survive is to strive. The problem is the tendency to strive for the wrong things, especially to emulate those who have found worldly success. The human creature is a search engine of great power and sophistication, but with little idea of how to choose search parameters or evaluate results. So, when misguided striving fails to provide satisfaction, there is a tendency to believe that the alternative must be a rejection of all striving, that the answer is to lie on a Caribbean beach lathered in coconut oil.”
― Michael Foley, The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

“And, like Buddha, Spinoza is often dismissed as a mere seeker of tranquillity – but what he valued most was joy, which he defined as a sense of empowerment created by the understanding mind. But, again as in the teachings of Buddha, understanding is not a passive, final state, but a process requiring ceaseless effort. In another insight prefiguring neurobiology, which defines living organisms as systems for optimizing life conditions, Spinoza suggested that our very nature is to strive. His Latin word for human nature, conatus, means ‘striving’ or ‘endeavour’: ‘The striving by which each thing attempts to persevere in its being is nothing other than the actual essence of the thing.’ And the striving has to be difficult to be valuable: ‘If salvation were readily available and could be attained without great effort, how could it be neglected by almost everyone? All that is excellent is as difficult to attain as it is rare.”
― Michael Foley, The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

“We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the East I saw rhubarb already. In Japan in the spring we eat cucumbers.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“So the awareness we are talking about here is not constant awareness as an object of mind. Instead of taking awareness as an object, you become one with awareness, one with the open space, which of course also means becoming one with the actual things you're working with. Then the whole process becomes a very easy one-way process, rather than a situation in which you're trying to split yourself into different levels of awareness, with one level minding the other. With this easy one-way, one-step process, you begin to make a real relationship with objects and with the beauty of objects as well.

Don't try to possess the openness, but just acknowledge it and then turn away from it. It is important to turn away, because if you try to possess the openness, you have to chase after it. You try to follow it, which you can't actually do. You can't actually possess it at all. If you let go of it and disown it, and then continue working, this feeling stays with you all the way along.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness