"I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance." --Wesley Snipes

Saturday, May 14, 2005

"A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness toward themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused. Instead of appreciating our lives, we often take our existence for granted or we find it depressing and burdensome. People threaten to commit suicide because they aren't getting what they think they deserved out of life. They blackmail others with the threat of suicide, saying they will kill themselves if certain things don't change. Certainly we should take our lives seriously, but that doesn't mean driving ourselves to the brink of disaster by complaining about our problems or holding a grudge against the world.

When you don't punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contatct the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness towards yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately. You don't feel that you have to ignore your problems or exaggerate your potential. That kind of gentleness towards youself and appreciation of yourself is very necessary. It provides the ground for helping yourself and others."

--Chogyam Trungpa

10 comments:

RL said...

Amen, brother. Glad to see you're blogging again.

Anonymous said...

make your way to naropa, as trungpa is the one who founded it.

Stuart Greenhouse said...

Good words.

Alison Stine said...

Yay.

That is all.

Unknown said...

Hi Tony.

d.

C. Dale said...

Happy to see you are back.

gina said...

Even better than bacon. Glad to meet you.

Gina

Brian Campbell said...

A prayer of appreciation... As it is said in Buddhism, if you don't appreciate your benefits, you will lose them; if you don't appreciate your obstacles, you will prolong them.
Appreciation is key.

Brian Campbell said...

Oh yes, and it's good to see you blogging again!

Pris said...

Found you through your comment on Silliman's blog and am putting a link to yours on my blog list, unless you object. I enjoyed reading your posts and poems. This post in particular--yes!

I just scrolled the comments again. See you know didi. Small world!