COMPASSION

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live thoughtlessly and begins to devote himself to his life
with reverence in order to give it true value.
— Albert Schweitzer

6/20/2014

Quotes


Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. Mark Twain

« Wherever the fates lead us let us follow. » Virgil



"In years to come we'll be talking about mindfulness as we talk about exercise." ~ Sally Boyle



"If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness." -Jack Handey


"You have already written your brilliant, funny and immortal autobiography... It is your address book." -Allan Gurganus





When they get gloomy, people hold on to their wallets, says




A brief walk may increase creativity by 60%...even if you are indoors or on a treadmill. via

A Harvard sleep specialist advises rest, not more practice, for championship teams.



Being busy is often the antithesis of focusing on what's most important.

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"Although individuals need not be well-rounded, teams should be."

Experiment shows how junk food induces laziness.






Putting your own health first enables you to do more for other people.


The debate about whether greatness is born vs. made is a false dichotomy. Talent and practice amplify one another.



Better sleep + less stress = lower cancer risk

Talent is useless without effort. Investing 10,000 hours without talent is an even bigger waste.
 
via



How pausing to think about the future leads to better food choices. . .


We think better when we move more. Study finds kids & adults learn more while walking:  


Why sitting will be the next smoking. In US: avg person sits 8 hrs, obese get <1 a="" activity="" day="" min="" of="" span="">



Great relationships may:
-prevent colds -help wounds heal faster -boost work engagement by 7x


If you spend life trying to be good at everything, you don't have time to be great at anything.

If you lose 4 hours of sleep, is it like showing up for work after 6 beers?
 

 




Asking stupid questions is one of the smartest things you can do in a meeting.

A cardinal rule for managing email: "the fewer you send, the fewer you receive"


Every additional hour of effort is not equal to an extra hour of productivity. Here's why:


Great leaders are not well rounded, but great leadership teams are.

You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.


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This is your brain after a 20 min walk. Great visual via
 
 



90% of people could live to age 90 (in good health) if we made better choices.



Spend life studying what is right with people.



Typical (weakness-based) performance reviews are demoralizing your best people. via

Managers should spend at least 75% of their time building on people's strengths.


Lack of sleep leads to mindless web browsing and kills productivity. Harvard economist via NYT

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Health starts at the intersection of: 1. Eating right 2. Moving more 3. Sleeping better

What's in a protein bar? Convenience and (often) a lot of sugar. via



Only 48% of Americans are aware of the (strong) links between obesity and cancer. via
 



Top performers work in bursts and take frequent breaks.
 

 



5 Books to Help You Reach Your Goals for 2014 . . .


Are you sitting down? . . . your brain may be be shrinking.
 

 


What not to do when you're sleep deprived: 1. Drive 2. Decide 3. Buy 4. Brag (about it) and more via


No one knows exactly how much time they have to do what matters most. Powerful story from a doctor battling cancer:

Proof that calories are not created equal (in one image):
 
via
 



Just 20 minutes of activity provides a 12 hour boost in mood.

New research on aims to show: "this is your brain . . . and this is your brain on the couch"


"You manage what you measure."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?" ―Martin Luther King Jr.



The average Australian takes 9,695 steps a day. The average American? 5,117. Aim for 10,000.




Why one person follows another: 1. Trust 2. Compassion 3. Stability 4. Hope
 
 


Want to get healthy habits but unsure how to get started? Check this free assessment from




 
 
 
 
Day 20: Physical #activity (throughout the day) improves #productivity

Today, only 20 percent of jobs require real activity. This transformational shift mirrors increases in diabetes and obesity rates. You can now accomplish countless tasks with click of a mouse and a few keystrokes. While this increases efficiency, it comes at the expense of our physical health.
This epidemic of inactivity now spans the globe. From the United States to India and China, technology — from computers to washing machines — minimizes the need for manual labor, and our health suffers as a result. The way we cook, clean, work, and make products no longer requires strenuous activity.

Because of these seismic shifts in activity levels, you now have to find ways to infuse deliberate movement into your day. If you work in a traditional office setting, it is in your company’s best interest to ensure you get some activity during the workday. Emerging research suggests companies that provide employees with time to exercise, even during working hours, do not lose any business.

In fact, this research shows how you could be more productive if your organization gives you time to exercise during the workday. Even when you work fewer hours in a week, the tradeoff is a net positive for you and your organization. Other studies find that employees see significant increases in overall earnings as their activity levels rise.

Find a few moments each day when you can walk briskly. Do a few push-ups or anything else to break up a 10-hour span of limited activity. Ask a colleague to go for a walking meeting instead of sitting in uncomfortable chairs. The late Steve Jobs was famous for requiring colleagues and clients to go on walking meetings around his neighborhood. When a reporter asked him why he did, Jobs explained he could think better when he walked.

If nothing else, make sure you get up several times a day and move around your workspace. Work can make you fat, sick, and tired. But building movement into your daily routine will provide a buffer against today’s sedentary jobs. As a leading public health researcher put it, “In many ways we’ve engineered physical activity out of our lives, so we’ve got to find ways to put it back into our lives.”



"Rilke spoke of writing as an obedience to the moment, to what is given in the present." - Paul Quenon |
 


"St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries opens with an appeal: Listen. Perhaps it is the most important word in the Rule. Listen, obaudire, also means obey. In listening something new can emerge, something beyond my own assumptions, control, and agenda. Rainer Maria Rilke spoke of writing as an obedience to the moment, to what is given in the present. He would not find it strange if this were called a monastic approach to writing. He aspired to carry the cloister within him, although he knew he could not live in a monastery.”
—Brother Paul Quenon, an excerpt from “Prayer, Poverty, and Creativity,” a Christian monk’s reflections on solitude and community in the 2012 summer issue of Parabola: “Alone & Together.”
Art Credit: Shoda Koho, Moonlit Sea, c. 1920


The incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer


The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.
--Thomas Merton 


"Reality is iconoclastic," writes C.S. Lewis 

For that which is born death is certain, and for the dead birth is certain. Therefore grieve not over that which is unavoidable.
--Bhagavad Gita 


Photo: Heaven knows

How exact the skill of dying is;
It has no parallel,
And its exact circumference,
No woman born can tell. The art
Of giving birth is safely known,
Yet dying is a seed who's only sown;
No contemplation penetrates the life that grows
From soul's deep eye, which only
Heaven knows.

A note from the author:

I sat with my father for the last three days as he died.

This is a kind of inner and outer work that can only be appreciated through experience. It reminded me quite exactly of attending the birth of my children; and I hesitate to embroider either event with hyperbole. Neither is brutish or elevated; they are simple facts to be appreciated, each of which brings a depth of experience to respect and even cherish, since without them we cannot possibly begin to know what this life is.

At both birth and death, I realize I cannot know what life is except through the living of it, which is, the ancient sages and masters recognized, the one absolute. I can only know Being itself; all else, I graft onto it as an accessory. Yet it's always the grafts I treasure, thinking that blossoms and fruits alone give justice to the vine. 

The vine is where all the strength lies; the rest is sweet but temporary. In death, as in birth, for a moment, we see that vine, and appreciate it.

My father's struggle, of course, made a great impression; but so too did the enormous compassion and support of all the souls that gathered around him as he died. 

At our best, we humans have capacities for love so great that even angels look on in envy; why, then, do they so often fail us? It is a mystery. Perhaps it's our mortality itself that lights this fire in us, and nothing else will do; if so, death's well met, since it produces so much wonder.

-Lee van Laer, poetry editor




“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”
―Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director, born June 5th, 1898.

Art Credit: Drawing by Federico García Lorca, "Falling Mask"
Photo: “Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.” 

―Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director, born June 5th, 1898.

Art Credit: Drawing by Federico García Lorca, "Falling Mask"


Tomás Sánchez, "Contemplar y escuchar," 2011, acrylic on canvas | http://tmblr.co/ZjYlFy1Ij7qA3


Photo: "There are times in our lives when we come back to simply being here in the moment: it is inherently good and wholesome to let ourselves just be. Without the conceptual filter of “me,” the environment is nourishing, because we let it touch us rather than try to control or manipulate it. We can have a gentle relationship with our surroundings–as when sitting in a park on a sunny day with the breeze catching the leaves of the birch trees, the children playing by the lake, and the bikers going by.

When we are fully present, we are receptive to phenomenal world around us. Opening to sense perceptions, we become a sensate being, embodied. Being fully present, when we look, we actually see; when we listen, we hear; when we smell and taste, we savor it; when we touch, we truly feel. Connecting to the phenomenal world in this way is the key to contacting reality directly, beyond concept. We are able to experience the play of energies that is life itself.”

—Irini Rockwell, EMBODYING WISDOM: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s approach to the five wisdom energies, accompanied by his teaching on the sense and emotions, PARABOLA, Volume 31, No. 1, Spring 2006: “Coming to Our Senses.” | http://bit.ly/1ouyyFe

Photography Credit: Ansel Adams, "Weathered Door"
"There are times in our lives when we come back to simply being here in the moment: it is inherently good and wholesome to let ourselves just be. Without the conceptual filter of “me,” the environment is nourishing, because we let it touch us rather than try to control or manipulate it. We can have a gentle relationship with our surroundings–as when sitting in a park on a sunny day with the breeze catching the leaves of the birch trees, the children playing by the lake, and the bikers going by.

When we are fully present, we are receptive to phenomenal world around us. Opening to sense perceptions, we become a sensate being, embodied. Being fully present, when we look, we actually see; when we listen, we hear; when we smell and taste, we savor it; when we touch, we truly feel. Connecting to the phenomenal world in this way is the key to contacting reality directly, beyond concept. We are able to experience the play of energies that is life itself.”

—Irini Rockwell, EMBODYING WISDOM: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s approach to the five wisdom energies, accompanied by his teaching on the sense and emotions, PARABOLA, Volume 31, No. 1, Spring 2006: “Coming to Our Senses.” | http://bit.ly/1ouyyFe
 


Photography Credit: Ansel Adams, "Weathered Door"


Photo: "After accepting the invitation to the retreat, I had received the beguiling response, “Great! We’ll be here to welcome you home.” Over the next few weeks, I learned that this practice of welcoming home (as if they knew about my childhood jungle-girl fantasy games), this giving without restraint or expectation of return, was an aim of the retreat and of Moved By Love. The greeting party at the gate was made up of volunteers from all over India and California, people who had come to practice service, to weave a net of maitrî or lovingkindness, to carry the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi into a new age."
-Tracy Cochran

Read about our editor Tracy Cochran's recent journey to India in the latest issue of Parabola Magazine, or online here: http://bit.ly/1n2OCyw

How do you weave your net of lovingkindness; how do you practice welcoming people home?

Photo credit: Bindiya Rawat. http://bit.ly/1hqNCoU

Photo credit: Bindiya Rawat. http://bit.ly/1hqNCoU                                                                           







 


                                                                                                                                                       






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