All Is Well in the Great Mess

Everyone should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday - unless they are too busy; then they should sit for an hour.

– Zen Proverb

Heute habe ich Marion Giebels Übersetzung von Senecas “Das Leben ist kurz” hinzugefügt. Der Text ist auch über den Menüpunkt “Stoicism” erreichbar.

Source: A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1943)

Today I have added Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” , translated by Gregory Hays. You can also access it via the menu bar in the “Stoicism” section.

Today I have added Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” , translated by C.D.N. Costa. You can also access it via the menu bar in the “Stoicism” section.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
– Marcus Aurelius

“Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about
other people—unless it affects the common good. It will
keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too
preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and
what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what
they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and
keep you from focusing on your own mind.

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought:
everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly
everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used
to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What
are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and
truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that. And it
would be obvious at once from your answer that your
thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones—the
thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with
pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with
squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be
ashamed to be caught thinking.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3, Verse 4 (Gregory Hays)

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.”
– Dan Zadra

Kulturelles Feature „Ich muss dem Tag keinen Plan mehr geben“
Oder: einfach leben!

Von Cornelia Beuel

Anne Donaths Geschichte entwickelte sich wie die vieler Frauen: Abitur, Lehrerexamen, Ehe, drei Kinder, Hausfrau. Heute, sie ist jetzt 58 Jahre alt, ist ihr Leben geprägt von Verzicht: keine Waschmaschine, kein Kühlschrank, kein Strom, kein Telefon, kein Auto.

“The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.”
– Li Po

Now we’re ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck,
riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No it isn’t a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck,
and he cuddles in the swells.

“Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect.”
– Tenets of Wabi Sabi

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
– Anaïs Nin

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
– Wayne Dyer

„Ziehe dich in dich selbst zurück, so viel du kannst; verkehre mit denen, die dich besser machen, und erstatte solchen den Zutritt, die du besser machen kannst.“
– Seneca

“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with magic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.”
– Warren Buffett

“If you aim at great things, you must not allow yourself inclination toward the attainment of other things, however slight; but you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest.”
– Epicurus

“Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?”
– Epicurus

“In the end what matters most is
How well did you live
How well did you love
How well did you learn
to let go”
– Unknown Author

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
– Gautama Buddha

Thomas Jefferson often took the opportunity to advise his children, grandchildren, and others on matters of personal conduct. Over the years he developed a list of axioms for personal behavior. Some seem to have been of his own invention; others derived from classical or literary sources.

Jefferson’s most extensive list is the one he sent to Cornelia Jefferson Randolph , his granddaughter, while she was visiting her older sister and brother-in-law .

A Dozen Canons of Conduct in Life

1. never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.