"Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see." - Leslie Jamison
“Life is not personal - it’s just what is happening..
So often we talk about life as though we really know what it is. We talk about ‘my life’, and ‘my mind’ and ‘my body’, ‘my family’, ‘my health’, ‘my car’, ‘my country’, my everything, but actually here is the cause of our discontent. The possessive ‘I, me, mine and my’, the manifestation of ego.
Life is just life. This life is not about you, you just make it about you, it’s not personal, you just make it personal. This is a great liberating truth. Life is not about you. No-one is trying to upset you or cause you pain, it’s just how things are in this moment. No-one is trying to hurt you or destroy what you do. Your ideas and plans are not better than someone else’s, but they’re not worse either. Your thoughts and feelings are not less important than someone else’s, but they’re not more important either. When we truly know this all reasons to argue, fight and kill fall away.
We want our life to mean something, to have value and importance, but actually, it’s just life. Beings are born and beings die, they all do, so relax. Surrender into the beauty and power of the Truth. Enjoy all the beautiful things that will happen for you today, and patiently be with all the others. No reason to be upset, after all, it’s only life.
May all beings be happy.”
Plants have to make complex decisions on the best time to blossom, juggling up to twenty environmental factors, such as the length of day or the warmth of the air, comparing the evolution of these conditions over a span of at least a month. In other words, plants gather as much information about the world they live in as possible and, attentive to changes in it, act with discernment.
If consciousness literally means being “with knowledge,” then plants fit the bill perfectly. Of course, they do not have the sense organs we are used to, such as the eyes and the ears, to receive stimuli from the environment. But they do have cells and tissues (say, photosensitive receptor cells) that do the trick as well as—and sometimes better than—an animal or human eye or ear would.
The data they receive from the constantly changing world is essential for their survival. In fact, they change in tune with the world and with the seasons, growing when the conditions are optimal, or shedding leaves and bringing life to a minimum in the cold of winter. We might say that plant consciousness is saddled with tons of knowledge because plants live with an extreme sensitivity to the places where they grow.
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me doing stand up: here’s a funny thing i’ve noticed: sometimes when you’re dreaming, you know it is a dream. you see the precious split right down the middle, between sense and magic, and you can hold there in that wonder before you wake up.
"I’d rather be around a passionate nerd than a non-passionate cool person. Because if you lack passion, your soul is diminishing by the second. You have to be passionate about something. Call it obsessed or whatever you want, but be obsessed about something. Obsessed people care. I’m passionate about so many things, it becomes an issue at certain points, but at least you have the ability to feel that much about something." - Matt Cohen (via purplebuddhaquotes)
"I’m afraid of time… I mean, I’m afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I’m afraid of the quick judgements or mistakes everybody makes. You can’t fix them without time." - Ann Brashares (via purplebuddhaquotes)
"The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eye." - Pema Chödrön (via purplebuddhaquotes)
