AOM Meditations: 110420

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"Happiness is not the endless pursuit of pleasant experiences - that sounds more like a recipe for exhaustion - but a way of being that results from cultivating a benevolent mind, emotional balance, inner freedom, inner peace and wisdom. Each of these qualities is a skill that can be enhanced through training the mind...

For just a few moments, thoughts of the past are suppressed, the mind is not burdened with plans for the future, and the present moment is liberated from all mental constructs. This moment of respite, from which all sense of emotional urgency has vanished, is experienced as one of profound peace. For someone who has achieved a goal, completed a task, or won a victory, the tension they have long-carried with them relaxes. The ensuing sense of release is felt as a deep calm, free of all expectation and fear. This experience is just a passing glimpse brought on by a particular set of circumstances. We call it a magic moment, a state of grace. And yet the difference between these flashes of happiness seized on the fly and the immutable peacefulness of the sage, for instance, is as great as that between the tiny section of the sky seen through the eye of a needle and the limitless expanses of outer space. The two conditions differ in dimension, duration, and depth. Even so, we can learn something from these fleeting moments, these lulls in our ceaseless struggles; they can give us a sense of what true plenitude might be and help us recognize the conditions that favor it."

~Matthieu Ricard