Estela

“Because love, compassion, and joy can lead to excessive attachment, their warmth needs to be balanced with equanimity. Because equanimity can lead to excessive detachment, its coolness needs to be balanced with love, compassion, and joy. Established together, these radiant qualities express mental harmony.”
― Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

“In the front room, a two-story flutter, love notes from the German Frau’s first marriage barely tethered to a structure so it shifted in the wind, one tiny home movie projected on each. A sculpture of marriage, marriage come alive.
Lancelot felt tears start to his eyes. It was so exactly right. The Germans saw the gleam, and both of them--like budgerigars on their perch--sidled up and hugged Lancelot around the waist.”
― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“We were young and the focus on human suffering gave our retreats gravitas. But suffering is not the goal, it is the beginning of the path. Now in the retreat I teach, I also encourage participants to awaken to their innate joy. From the very beginning I encourage them to allow the moments of joy and well-being to deepen, to spread throughout their body and mind. Many of us are conditioned to fear joy and happiness, yet joy is necessary for awakening. As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, ‘When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine.”
― Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

“The Buddhist approach to this collective suffering is to turn toward it. We understand that genuine happiness and meaning will come through tending to suffering. We overcome out own despair bby helping other to overcome theirs.”
― Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are