The great French Impressionist painter Renoir, right at the end of his very long life, said to a friend, "I am just now learning to paint. " Renoir carried his gift with a humility which realized how much he still had to learn. Anyone who goes deeply into a field in life and realizes this, gains a sense of proportion that can only make you humble.
The natural wish and impetus to feel oneself to be an individual, to be special, includes standing out more than anyone else.
What's not often in the present moment is the thinking mind.
When we're fully engaged in the present moment, no matter what we're doing, the question of meaning never seems to arise. It's because we feel fulfilled and that is inherently meaningful.
If we're trying to get the perfect house, the perfect relationship or the perfect job, it's likely there's some kind of fear driving us beyond the natural wish to improve. It's really the refusal to acknowledge that life - including ourselves - is simply not perfect.
We can acquire as much knowledge as we would like with a few taps on our keyboard. That's extremely valuable, but wisdom comes again from some different dimension.
The everyday, familiar sense of self who lives in time, and that dimension which we've called presence, that is always here, that is still and quiet.
When you die, God and the Angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.
Day by day, tiny specks of us float away.
The ego, as our familiar sense of self, seems predicated on fear. The fear that we might not make it, that we might not get where we want to go. But deep down there is also a grain of fear that we have nothing to give or nothing to offer. I think that's the ego's justifiable anxiety about its substantiality and existence.
Practice remembrance of the present moment, again and again.
I don't think one can run out and try and chase love.
Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.
In today's world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. Poetry urges us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life.
If you allow yourself to fully feel the life you're in - not conceptually, but viscerally in the present moment - then that is inherently meaningful.
Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises.
Be willing to be where you actually are. In my experience, that is the most inherently meaningful experience you can have.
Everything constantly changes.
I certainly spent many years in my early life chasing all over the globe for meaning and purpose. I'd feel like I'd found it, then it would fade away again.
Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.