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" Shantideva. the Indian Buddhist sage, talks about licking honey off the edge of a blade. No matter how sweet, the price we pay is much higher.
By wallowing in my own nostalgic memories, spending so much time thinking about a relationship that had moved on, I had been needlessly carrying pain. Suffering.
We begin to believe that our happiness depends on a certain outcome or person or lifestyle. That's the superstition.
It can be useful to have goals. Purpose. But we should never believe that our happiness depends on achieving them. The two are really quite separate.
Don't allow your thoughts to be like thieves, stealing your own contentment.
Thinking too much about oneself is a cause of much suffering, the Dalai Lama said. Anxiety, depression, resentment, fear - these become much worse with too much attention to the self. The mantra "me, me, me" is not so good. "
― David Michie , The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat, #2)
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" So how do we know,” asked Serena, “when something that has been positive in the past has outlived its usefulness?” Ludo looked over at her with eyes so clear they seemed almost silver. “When it causes us to suffer,” he replied simply. “Suffer comes from a Latin word meaning to carry. And while pain is sometimes unavoidable, suffering is not. For instance, we may have a very happy relationship with someone, and then we lose the person. We feel pain, of course: that’s natural. But when we continue to carry that pain, feeling constantly bereft, that’s suffering. "
― David Michie , The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat, #2)