Everyday Mindfulness

I just found this quote while surfing around and thought it would be great to share it and start a thread dedicated to such quotes. So here goes number one:

"If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?" - Rumi (1207-1273), Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.


Feel free to share any of your favourites here.

My grandmother was fond of saying, "Never try cleaning your windows with a hard-boiled egg."

I used to think that it was a sign that she was slightly bonkers. Recently I've been wondering if she meant it in a Zen way.

JonW wrote:My grandmother was fond of saying, "Never try cleaning your windows with a hard-boiled egg."

I used to think that it was a sign that she was slightly bonkers. Recently I've been wondering if she meant it in a Zen way.

Heh, maybe it was along the lines of 'hard boiled eggs are useful, but only in certain contexts' - there are no conceptual universal truths. Sounds pretty 'zen' to me .

Fiona is taking over the Twitter account while I am away next (I'm practising letting go). Some nice Mindfulness quotes will help her to put out on the Twitter feed. There are so many followers on there now that anything half-decent gets loads of retweets and therefore more followers. This tweet has got the record number of retweets so far at 156:

Learn from the past. Plan for the future. Live in the present. #mindfulness

There's a 140 character limit, see who can get the most retweets while I'm away.

Another thing my nan taught me was that the fly is the world's smallest bird. I actually believed that to be true until I was twelve, when a biology teacher put me right on it.

when i did my mindfulness course my therapist said one day "you don't have to like it, you just have to do it". don't know where it came from but i still apply it to situations now.

piedwagtail91 wrote:when i did my mindfulness course my therapist said one day "you don't have to like it, you just have to do it". don't know where it came from but i still apply it to situations now.

It's funny you posted this one, because I was considering doing the same, although I thought it's best to keep the direct mindfulness stuff elsewhere so I didn't. I think this is a JKZ phrase, actually. I used it to great effect during a very challenging standing 'taichi' posture exercise today for 70 minutes. Also the following phrase gave me increased focus so that I could accept the necessary pain more easily:

"Practice as if your life depended on it, as in many ways it surely does." - Mark Williams/Jon Kabat-Zinn.

it wouldn't surprise me if she's 'borrowed' it from JKZ

These are great guys, hopefully this thread will give me plenty of stuff to use on Twitter

It's definitely Jon Kabat-Zinn.