We Were Made for These Times Quotes

“When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing. [I]t is the philosophy of the Tao that…the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it. So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. —Alan Watts, What Is Tao? Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? —Lao Tzu”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Thay often said, “A true practitioner isn’t someone who doesn’t suffer, but someone who knows how to handle their suffering.” We could say that the measure of our accomplishment or success is not that our life has no ups and downs, but that we can surf the waves!”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“In the Buddha’s most essential teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he shares his discovery that suffering is a part of life, and there is no escape from it. This is the first Noble Truth and acknowledging it can help us to suffer less. If we can accept where we are, and not judge the disruption in our life as wrong or bad, we can touch great freedom. This is because fighting what is actually doesn’t work. As the saying goes, “Whatever we resist persists.” In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “We need suffering in order to see the path…. If we are afraid to touch our suffering, we will not be able to realize the path of peace, joy, and liberation. Don’t run away. Touch your suffering and embrace it. Make peace with it.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“When I was a novice, I could not understand why, if the world is filled with suffering, the Buddha has such a beautiful smile. Why isn’t he disturbed by all the suffering? Later I discovered that the Buddha has enough understanding, calm, and strength; that is why the suffering does not overwhelm him. He is able to smile to suffering because he knows how to take care of it and to help transform it. We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness, and strength so we can help transform the situation. The ocean of tears cannot drown us if karuna [compassion] is there. That is why the Buddha’s smile is possible. —Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“By slowing down, choosing to rest back into the uncertainty rather than fighting it, I was able to touch into a sense of space, precisely in moments when it felt like there was no way to keep going and I would be totally overwhelmed. If we can breathe in and out, putting our mind completely on our breathing, or feel our bodies and put all of our attention on the sensations in the body, we can create that space. We slow things down and let our nervous system recalibrate and center. The external situation may not change, but we’ve changed in relation to our external situation. If we can stop, we have the chance to touch into something deeper than overwhelm. This practice of pausing, or stopping, helps the seed of our question to mature and ripen into the guidance and direction we need. In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Joseph Goldstein was one of my interview teachers on these retreats at IMS. When I shared how distressing it was to find myself with no solid ground under me whatsoever, he mentioned Alan Watts’s book The Wisdom of Insecurity.4 It points out that when we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we are less open to the many other possibilities available. But when we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential and life could unfold in innumerable ways. So, rather than avoid and fear this place of uncertainty, we can embrace it and all its gifts.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“In Buddhist psychology this part of our mind is called store consciousness. It has the function of storing our memories and all the various mind states we can experience in latent, sleeping form. (I will share more about this in Chapter 5.) For example, maybe you’ve experienced trying to solve a problem or find an answer to something that perplexes you. You think hard and circle round and round in your mind, but you feel you don’t get anywhere. Then you let the question go, and suddenly when you least expect it, inspiration or helpful ideas come to you in a time of rest, and you just know what to do. That is store consciousness operating. It is working on the problem for you while your day-to-day consciousness rests. Store consciousness works in a very natural and easeful way and is much more efficient than our thinking mind. When wisdom arises from store consciousness, it feels right in the body and we no longer have doubts. But waiting for the answer to arise can be challenging at times because we may really want to know the answer. We may find ourselves feeling deeply insecure and fearful if we don’t know what to do, which path to choose. We worry we will make the wrong choice and we catastrophize about what will happen if we take this or that direction. It’s hard to find our way if we continue to feed this worry and fear. We can recognize that we are not helping the situation and stop. Returning to this moment, anchoring ourselves in our body, we will find the solidity of the home inside of us, which is capable of helping us find our way, if only we let it, and if we can let go of trying to figure out the future in our heads.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Thay would often say, “Don’t try to figure out the answer by thinking about it.” In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious. These deeper life questions can’t be resolved at the level of the mind, but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind, and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then we’ll know the answer to our question without a doubt. But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it is growing roots. It won’t grow that way! It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deeper consciousness to take care of it, and let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment, and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years. But we can trust that the seed is “down there,” being tended to by our deeper consciousness, and one day it will sprout into a clear answer.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? —Lao Tzu”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing. [I]t is the philosophy of the Tao that…the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it. So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. —Alan Watts, What Is Tao?”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“How do we do this? One of the ways is to stay with what is here and now, on the platform of the train station so to speak, watching the trains of our thoughts and plans come and go, rather than jumping on a thought-train that is heading into the future, or another thought-train that takes us into the past. Those plans, worries, and anxieties will surely arise in our mind but we can learn to notice them and take good care of them rather than get carried away by them. Bringing our attention to our breath or to the sensations in our body helps us to stay on the platform of the now. The past and future are not the place where we can come home to ourselves and resource ourselves with the elements we need to move through our difficulties. We can only come home to ourselves in the present moment, in the here and now. We can spend lots of our time and energy trying to predict or control what the future will bring. This doesn’t usually serve us. In truth, we don’t need to know what the future will bring. We just need to be right in this moment, and if we touch it deeply, mind and body united, we will find we have all that we need to meet the present. We can’t find what we need to meet tomorrow or a month from now because we can’t control or exactly know the future, but we will find what we need for right now.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“If we’re not aware of what is happening in the moment because we are caught up in our thoughts or reveries, or in the grip of worry or other strong emotions, it’s as if we have left our house. If we stay away for a long time, dust accumulates and unwanted visitors may take up residence in our home. Things like stress and tension accumulate in our bodies and minds, and over time, if we don’t tend to them, they can lead to physical or psychological illness. But the beauty of awareness is that we can always return home to ourselves. Our home is always there, waiting for us to come back. There are numerous ways we can go home to ourselves: by being aware of our breath, by being aware of body sensations or bodily movements, and by connecting with the reality around us, like the sounds in our environment. And when we come back home in these ways, we are able to take stock and survey the territory of our being, seeing clearly what parts of our inner landscape need more support, where we need to pay more attention. It is especially tempting in times of transition and challenge to abandon our homes, to leave our territory, in search of answers, perhaps by worrying about what will happen in the future. This is precisely the moment when we need to return to the present moment, feel our bodies, and take good care of ourselves now. Because the future is made of this moment. If we take good care of this moment, even if it is very difficult, we are taking good care of the future. It may also be hard to come home if we sense that unresolved pain has accumulated and we don’t want to face it. We may get into the habit of avoiding our home completely. We don’t want to be with those raw, unprocessed parts of our experience that are painful and may be quite scary. If this is our situation, it is important to have compassion for ourselves for not wanting to return home to face these difficulties inside of us. And yet the only way we can heal them, move through them, and make our home a more cozy place is to turn towards them. As the teaching goes: “The only way out is in.” Or through.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“One morning when I was a novice nun, in slow walking after sitting meditation, I became very present and aware of every step. I began by being aware that as I was stepping with my left foot, I was at the same time stepping with my right, because my left foot could not be without my right. And vice versa. Then I saw that my arms were also contained in my feet, so I was also stepping with my arms. Then my hands, my stomach, brain, sense organs, heart, lungs. I was 100 percent with my body. I was tasting the earth with my feet, listening to it, looking at it, feeling it, knowing it, smelling it with my feet. My heart was loving it, my lungs breathing it in and out. Then I turned my attention more towards the Earth and knew I was also walking on cool streams of water flowing under me, and hot, fiery liquid deep below, in the center of the Earth. I imagined walking on the feet of those directly opposite us on the other side of the planet.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“A key step that can help us begin to settle ourselves when we are profoundly unsettled is to come home, to ourselves, in this moment, whatever is happening. This is one way of speaking about mindfulness, or being present: coming home to ourselves. When we bring our mind back to our body we come home. We could consider this state as our true home. This home inside of us is a home no one can take away from us, and it cannot be damaged or destroyed. No matter what happens around us, if we can find this home inside of us, we are always safe. When we touch this experience of coming home, it is like we have finally arrived home after a long journey. We experience a sense of peace and even freedom, no matter how confining the outer circumstances. Coming home to ourselves feels like belonging; it is a state that holds us and enables us to hold others. This is so important because we can live our whole lives estranged from this home within ourselves. My teacher Thay sums up his whole lifetime of teachings with one sentence: “I have arrived, I am home.” For him, the principal aim of mindfulness practice is to experience that we have already arrived, here and now. There is nowhere we need to run to or be, other than right here in the present moment. And we experience ourselves at home, no longer looking for some refuge outside of us, in some other place or time, when we touch the truth that all that we long for and search after is here inside of us. We can experience encountering this spacious and free place of our true home in unexpected moments as we spend more time tuning in to what is happening inside us and around us.”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“You already are what you want to become. —Master Lin Chi”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“But the stone that the builder refuse Shall be the head cornerstone, And no matter what game they play, Eh, we got something they could never take away; We got something they could never take away —Bob Marley, “Natty Dread Rides Again”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled. —Tibetan Buddhist prayer quoted by Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed. —Alice Walker, Living by the Word”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“This is the era of just redemption we feared at its inception We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter. To offer hope and laughter to ourselves. So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? —Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”1”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

“Ajahn Chah, the Thai Forest monk and teacher, asked his students one day when they passed a big boulder, “Do you think that boulder is heavy?” His students said, “Yes, it’s extremely heavy.” Then Ajahn Chah said, “Only if you try to pick it up!” So, we can avoid unnecessarily picking up boulders when we let go of fighting the challenges in our lives. If we can change something, we should do it, without complaining, judging, or blaming. But if we can’t do anything to change it, we can learn to accept it. Shantideva, the eighth-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar, says it this way: “Why worry if you can do something about it? And why worry if you cannot do anything about it?”
― Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption