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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Haemin Sunim
Read between
July 31 - August 10, 2023
Awareness is inherently pure, like the open sky. Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky, but they can never pollute it. Negative emotions come and go like clouds, but the wide-open sky remains.
To keep doing your work for a long time, do not treat it as just work. View it as a source of enjoyment and growth. The road to happiness lies not just in finding a good job, but also in learning to enjoy what you are asked to do.
Instead of a lottery ticket, buy some flowers for yourself and your family. If you buy flowers and place them in the living room, you will feel like a winner every time and find abundant beauty whenever you pass by the living room.
If you genuinely care for others and look for ways to help others succeed, you won’t need to look for ways to boost your mood. A selfless and kind act will lift your spirit and self-worth. If you are having a bad day, see if you can find a way to help someone else. Even a small gesture of help will make you feel better.
How can we better understand our negative emotions and try to resolve them instead of suppressing them? The answer is fairly simple. All we have to do is separate the raw energy of negative emotions from linguistic labels like “anger” or “hatred” and then witness it calmly until the energy morphs into something else. What is important here is not to get attached to words like “anger,” “hatred,” and “jealousy,” and instead to witness the raw energy behind the labels.
“What is so great about just observing? Isn’t it avoiding reality?” The answer is quite the opposite: You are not avoiding it; you are actually staring straight into it. Rather than getting caught in the emotion without any self-awareness, you are inquiring and then feeling what is there.
Once you awaken to this truth, you will not be swayed by negative emotions and can regard them as a passing cloud instead of identifying with them as a defining part of your self. Do not fight your negative emotions. Observe and befriend them.
A moral purist who is quick to judge others often fails to see the flaws within himself.
How can you tell if someone is truly enlightened? Shower him with both praise and criticism. If he shows signs of being susceptible to either, then it means he has forgotten his enlightened nature.
Our emotions are capricious, like the weather in London. One minute, when someone criticizes us, we are offended and furious. The next minute, when someone praises us, we feel proud and pompous. Unless we recognize the still point beneath the surface of our changing emotions, we will feel we are hostage to their whims.
Remember that you are neither your feelings nor the story your mind tells about you to make sense of them. You are the vast silence that knows of their emergence and their disappearance.
Do not try to get rid of your thoughts—it won’t work. Instead, witness the emergence of a thought. Witness the disappearance of a thought. The moment you become aware of it, the mind quiets and becomes clear.
Life is like theater. You are assigned a role. If you don’t like the role, keep in mind that you have the power to re-create the role you want.
A person does not live the way he says he would. He lives the way he has been living.
Historically, the people who bring about change in society tend to be not the middle-aged but the passionate youth. Their hearts are sensitive to the plight of the oppressed. Their spirits stand tall against injustice and fight for the voiceless. Hold on to that youthful heart and spirit no matter how old you are.
When you are making a decision, try to assess how many people it will benefit. If it satisfies only your ego and unnecessarily hurts many, then it is the wrong decision.
Trying to convince someone to adopt our views is largely the work of our ego. Even if we turn out to be right, our ego knows no satisfaction and seeks a new argument to engage in.
Being right isn’t nearly as important as being happy together.
Instead of being the smartest person in the room, quick to critique others, be the warmhearted friend, bringing people together and sharing things. Be the sensitive neighbor, capable of feeling the suffering of others.
If I want to convince someone, I first listen attentively and try to understand them. Even if I am right, they won’t be convinced until they feel heard and respected.
If you get angry while debating right and wrong, your enraged voice has just conceded defeat.
Being a critic is easy. But if the critic tries to run the operation, he soon understands that nothing is as easy as his criticisms. Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic’s ego.
When a question has both a long, complicated, but logical-sounding answer and a simple answer that can be understood by even a child, the right answer is usually the simple one.
When you ask a question and there is no response, then that is the answer.
Speak from your heart, which is tender, simple, and true. People will understand you, and like you.
When someone swears at you, stay calm and collected for thirty seconds. Then, that is the end of it. But if you fight back and demand, “What is your problem?” you will have to spend more time with that unhappy person.
The person who betrayed you and left, the person who stole from you and disappeared, the person who stabbed you in the back and acted as if nothing happened—forgive them. Not for them, but for your own sake—truly, completely, for yourself. Not because they deserve your forgiveness; not because they are only human. Forgive them. So you can be free. So you can be happy. So you can go on living your life. It won’t be easy, and it will feel unjust.
Does the person you hate deserve to be carried around in your heart? Keep in your heart only those who love you. If you carry around with you people you hate, it causes only angst and depression.
Don’t just wait for what you want to happen. Act first.
Love is like an uninvited guest. Love will come when it wants to. Love will leave when you ask more of it.
Proof of having really loved: You do not speak ill of your ex even after your relationship has ended.
Sometimes, after a relationship is over, you catch yourself thinking, “I hope she is happy,” without bitterness. This is a sign you have moved on.
We like to get involved in other people’s business, thinking we are doing so for them. We offer unsolicited help and interfere with their lives. We take away their power and make them feel incapable. This stems from our desire for control and recognition. It has little to do with love.
If we consider someone’s identity as rooted primarily in his hometown or the school he graduated from, we end up looking only at his past and not paying attention to his current skills or future vision.
There are many more ordinary hours in life than extraordinary ones. We wait in line at the supermarket. We spend hours commuting to work. We water our plants and feed our pets. Happiness means finding a moment of joy in those ordinary hours.
Second, not everyone has to like me. After all, I do not like everyone. Certainly for all of us, there are politicians, coworkers, clients, and family members we simply cannot stand. So then why should everyone like me? There is no need to torment yourself because someone dislikes you. Accept it as a fact of life; you cannot control how others feel about you. If someone does not like you, let her have her opinion. Just move on.
Do not let people’s opinions of you determine who you are. Instead of worrying about what others think, devote yourself to your dreams.
Knowledge wants to talk. Wisdom wants to listen.
A foolish person thinks, “I already know that.” He keeps anything new from coming into his mind. A wise person thinks, “I don’t know the whole story.” She opens herself up to even greater wisdom.
Life isn’t a hundred-meter race against your friends, but a lifelong marathon against yourself.
If Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius were all alive and gathered in the same place, would they argue over who is right? Or would they respect and admire one another’s teachings? Religious conflict can often be blamed not on the founders of religions but on their fanatical followers.
When an unenlightened person does good, he tries to leave his mark. When an enlightened person does good, he leaves no marks.
The holier a person is, the more likely it is that she describes herself as a sinner. This is because she doesn’t lie to herself.
