“Generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom keep turning our mind to enlightenment like a flower seeking sunlight. This brings genuine delight. The more awake we are, the more connected we feel with other sentient beings. The more awake we are, the more we want to help others achieve the same freedom.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 210)
“We often conduct our life as though it’s going to last forever. With this attitude, we want everything. The fact of death puts a limit on what we can have, what we can do. We don’t need to think about death all the time, but to ponder it, to contemplate it, gives us perspective and inspiration about living our life. It also makes us less spoiled. It makes us look at the balance of our life and determine what needs to come first. What is important to me? How shall I use my life? We’re able to enter situations more openly once we’ve related with death. It makes our love more powerful.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 156)
“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.” ~ John Gardner, James Clear Blog
Turning The Mind Into An Ally [Book]
Book Overview: Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind is the essential first step in accomplishing nearly any goal. Growing up American with a Tibetan twist, Sakyong Mipham talks to Westerners as no one can: in idiomatic English with stories and wisdom from American culture and the great Buddhist teachers. Turning the Mind Into an Ally makes it possible for anyone to achieve peace and clarity in their lives. “Our own mind is our worst enemy. We try to focus, and our mind wanders off. We try to keep stress at bay, but anxiety keeps us awake at night… We can create an alliance that allows us to actually use our mind, rather than be used by it. This is a practice anyone can do.” ~ Sakyong Mipham
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence. In theistic language, it is to ‘know God’ — not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 146)
“Your life’s journey has an outer purpose and an inner purpose. The outer purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’s inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness at this moment.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 88)
“There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. You can improve your life situation, but you cannot improve your life. Life is primary. Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete, perfect. Your life situation consists of your circumstances and your experiences. There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, for Being. The only point of access for that is the Now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 86)
“If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to ‘make it.’ You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 58)
“The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now—that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. Slipping away from the present moment even for a second may mean death. Unfortunately, they come to depend on a particular activity to be in that state. But you don’t need to climb the north face of the Eiger. You can enter that state now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 51)
“While there is no guarantee of success in leadership, there is one thing that is certain: leading people is the most challenging and, therefore, the most gratifying undertaking of all human endeavors.” ~ Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership (Page 287)
“The elders were all proof that you could live a full and fulfilling life even when the weather turned stormy. So why worry about the clouds in the forecast? Live your life, put on a show, take a chance, give thanks for your failures along with your successes—they’re two sides of the same coin. If we’re living longer, maybe we have an obligation to live better: wiser, kinder, more grateful and forgiving, less vengeful and covetous. All those things make life better for everyone, but especially the person trying to live by them. Even, I would add, when we fail in our attempts to get there.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 231)
“So often we measure the day by what we do with it—cure cancer or surf in Maui or meet with our child’s math teacher—and overlook what is truly miraculous, which is the arrival of another day. Enjoy it or not. The day doesn’t care, but if you miss it, it won’t be back again.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 216)
“It takes seventy or eighty or ninety years to learn the value of another sunrise or a visit from a surly grandchild—to appreciate how amazing, really amazing, life is. They only seem paltry because we haven’t lived long enough to see their value, or survived enough losses to know how surmountable most losses are. Simple gifts can be as rewarding as more elaborate ones, and there’s no rule that a life of daily mah-jongg in a fluorescent-lit community room is less fulfilling than one of high-stakes baccarat in Monte Carlo.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 215)
“The challenge, then, is to find a purpose in life that will sustain you through the latter years. Kickboxing might not be a great choice, but painting, political activity, time with family, or passing along your skills to the next generation can be a reason for living at any age. Practice law, feed the hungry, teach piano, harass your congressman, tell your story. It’s your purpose in life: make it a passion, not a hobby.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 206)
“Fulfillment need not be what’s just around the corner. In the end, wisdom lies in finding it in the imperfect now.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 178)
“People with much less enjoy great lives.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 19)
“If you want close, supportive relationships with friends and family members when you’re eighty-five, trace a series of moves leading up to that, all the way back to the present time. Pleasant, right? That’s the universe telling you to spend more time with people you care about. If you want a life of purpose, don’t you think you’d better start finding your purpose now? You may not get there by working more hours, coming home late, putting off time with your friends and family. Maybe you want a different job, a long talk with your son, a move to a different part of the country. Maybe the answer is ending a marriage in which you’re no longer helping each other grow. I never said this was going to be easy.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Pages 16-17)
“You need to consider the future and think, ‘What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?’ You need to know where you are, so you can start to chart your course. You need to know who you are, so that you understand your armament and bolster yourself in respect to your limitations. You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on the world.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Pages 62-63)