Anyone who wants to know the art of living, who wants to experience this Dhamma, has to understand it clearly. But as long as you are expecting, then it will not happen.
–Mirka Knaster, Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra
Polish yourself for months and years, but do not be eager for results.
–M.Theresa Kelleher, The Journal of Wu Yubi: The Path to Sagehood
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
–Thomas Merton, letter to Jim Forest
Title is Lojong (Mind-Training) Slogan #28,
