Twitter is an endless source of inspiration and guidance for creators and artists. Here’s a pearl of wisdom from Brian Koppelman on writing:
Author: markbartels
Great, greater, greatest
Be in service to others. Start and end the day this intention in mind.
* * *
“The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.”
– Atisa
Face it
Running away is not the same as being free
None of us get out of here alive…
Acceptance of our mortality sharpens our focus on being present and enjoying every day. We secretly think we will live forever and bow out when it suits us. That’s the ego telling us we are in control.
We have a limited time in our body. We are all going die. Let that sink in.
Taste the coffee, smell the air, breath deeply and savor every day as it were your last. The acceptance of death increases our day to day joy. What a paradox!
The truth hurts
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it”
– George Orwell
Bow
San Francisco beauty in unexpected places. The things we see when we are looking down, and not on our phones.
The pursuit of mastery
I love it when practices like Yoga, Aikido, Kung-fu, surfing, running, writing are described as nobel pursuits. It implies that the nobelness is not about achieving mastery, but more so achieved through the persuit of mastery. The answer is in the dirt of the day to day practice.
Green fields
It’s uncanny how many people imagine a green field when they meditate and still their mind. The field is there waiting for them.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
– Rumi
What can I offer?
Change the question from ‘what can I get?’ to ‘what can I offer?’ Do it every morning you wake up and try to start every interaction in this frame of mind.
Sunward I’ve climbed
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of …”– John Gillespie Magee’s “High Flight”
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