“Looking back, our days in Ogimi were intense but relaxed—sort of like the lifestyle of the locals, who always seemed to be busy with important tasks but who, upon closer inspection, did everything with a sense of calm. They were always pursuing their ikigai, but they were never in a rush.”
Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai (Page 110)
“The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
Washington Burnap, via Ikigai (Page 111)
“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
T. H. White, via Ikigai (Page 97)
“There is, in fact, no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense of ‘leaving the workforce for good’ as in English. According to Dan Buettner, a National Geographic reporter who knows the country well, having a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture that our idea of retirement simply doesn’t exist there.”
Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai (Page 10)
“Life carries as much meaning as you carry the capacity to be surprised, the capacity to wonder. So always remain open. Remind yourself again and again that life is infinite. It is always an ongoing process; it never comes to an end. It is an eternal journey, and each moment is new, each moment is original. When I say each moment is original, I mean each moment throws you back to your origin, each moment makes you a child again.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 288)
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one’s health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk!
Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it—but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion… if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“Every event has two handles: one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.”
Epictetus
“Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means ‘treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.'”
Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai (Page 4)
“Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.”
Japanese proverb, via Ikigai
“One has to learn to be patiently relaxed, and then the miracle of miracles happens: One day when you are really relaxed, something suddenly changes. A curtain disappears, and you see things as they are. If your eyes are too full of desires, expectation, longing, they cannot see the truth. The eyes are covered with the dust of desire. All search is futile. Search is a byproduct of the mind. To be in a state of nonsearch is the great moment of transformation. All the meditations are just preparations for that moment. They are not real meditations but just preparations so that one day you can simply sit, doing nothing, desiring nothing.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 283)
“One need not have a crowd around oneself. A few deep, intimate relationships are enough; they are really fulfilling. In fact, because people don’t have intimate relationships, they have many relationships to substitute. But there is not substitution for real intimacy. You can have one thousand friends—that will not make for one real one. But that’s what people are doing: They think that quantity can become a substitute for quality. It never does. It cannot.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 282)
“Meditation has nothing to do with time or place. Rather, it has something to do with you, your inner space. So whenever you are free of the day-to-day routine, relax and allow it to happen. It can happen any place, any time, because it is nontemporal and nonspatial.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 281)
“It almost always happens that lovers become childlike—because love accepts you. It makes no demands on you. Love does not say, ‘Be this, be that.’ Love simply says, ‘Be yourself. You are good as you are. You are beautiful as you are.’ Love accepts you. Suddenly you start dropping your ideals, ‘shoulds,’ personalities. You drop your old skin, and again you become a child. Love makes people young.'”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 279)
“The storm may be powerful, but no storm is endless. Giving space to what you feel is always valuable because it is an essential part of healing and letting go, but if you let it take control then it will be too easy to fall into past patterns. Being with it is better than becoming it. There is a subtle space you should become more familiar with, the space where reclaiming your power is truly possible – the space where you can feel a fire burning within you without giving it more fuel.”
Yung Pueblo
“To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.”
Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation
“While many of us have encountered serious trauma and some people have done us incredible harm, if we want to repair and heal the imprints that burden our subconscious and skew our perception, we need to embrace the hard work of becoming our own hero. There is no way around it. When it comes to you and the inner workings of your mind, no one has the power or authority to save you the way you can save yourself. All therapists, meditation teachers, counselors, and coaches can do is guide you to reclaim your own power. A guide is not a savior. A guide is simply the person who can show you how to walk the right path so that you can finally live without having to carry so many mental burdens.”
Yung Pueblo
“In a bad 1950s science fiction movie, you might see flying jetpacks, invisibility cloaks and ray guns. What we got instead is a device that fits in our pocket. It allows us to connect to more than a billion people. It knows where we are and where we’re going. It has all of our contacts, the sum total of all published knowledge, an artificially intelligent computer that can understand and speak in our language, one of the best cameras ever developed, a video camera with editor, a universal translator and a system that can measure our heart rate. We can look up real time pricing and inventory data, listen to trained actors read us audiobooks and identify any song, any plant or any bird. We can see the reviews from our community of nearby restaurants or even the reputation of a doctor or lawyer. It can track the location of our loved ones and call us a chauffeured vehicle at the touch of a button. And of course, we use it to have arguments. And to watch very short stupid videos.”
Seth Godin
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, air-less—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
C. S. Lewis