“To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you aren’t doing them… If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish the quickly so I can go and have dessert or a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert or my tea when I finally have them… Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, via Think Like A Monk (Page 135)
Quotes about Being Present Minded
“In the ashram we took the same thirty-minute walk on the same path at least once a day. Every day the monk asked us to keep our eyes open for something different, something we’d never before seen on this walk that we had taken yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Spotting something new every day on our familiar walk was a reminder to keep our focus on that walk, to see the freshness in each ‘routine,’ to be aware. Seeing something is not the same as noticing it.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 132)
“Everything you do in the day from washing to eating breakfast, having meetings, driving to work… watching television or deciding instead to read… everything you do is your spiritual life. It is only a matter of how consciously you do these ordinary things…”
Laurence Freeman, via Think Like A Monk (Page 77)
“A layperson who is consciously aiming to be continuously alive in the Now is a monk.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page Xii)
“Simple pleasures are just as transformative as extravagant experiences—so long as you remember how to enjoy them. I keep going back to this more than anything right now: the power of a dandelion, a blade of grass, a crisp breeze. We have forgotten how necessary these things are, and how important they are to our quality of life. We have forgotten about the very things that are right outside our own window. When you see something long enough, it becomes invisible—but, one of the best things you can do for yourself? Is to remember how to see. And sometimes, being in a small town does exactly that: gives you a more intimate lens with which to see the world around you. And to remind yourself that—no matter how overwhelming your world has gotten? There’s a gentle one waiting for you right here.”
Ash Ambirge
Everyday Osho [Book]
Book Overview: Everyday Osho features 365 short meditations that offer insights into living fully in the here and now. Each brief text is thoughtful and inspiring and the perfect length for starting a daily meditation practice. With topics that range from gratitude to nature to philosophy to love, Everyday Osho contains a full year of meditation and inspiration.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
Letting Your Bow Relax—A Short Story About Not Being So Serious All Of The Time
“Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy — period! Not happy ‘because of.’”
Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics
“The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.”
Cory Muscara, Twitter
“Be attentive to the present. Only in the present time can we understand eternity.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 334)
“One of the major ways to open yourself to the present so that it is a fresh and vibrant experience is to be intentional about not reacting impulsively to life, but instead slowing things down so that you have more time to align yourself with the actions that feel most genuine to who you are now instead of who you were in the past.”
Yung Pueblo
