Quotes from Karen Maezen Miller

You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy. You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy. ...

Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice does not occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are. You are looking for answers, insight, and wisdom that you already possess. Live the life in front of you, be the life you are, and see what you find out for yourself.

The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.

Every bit of life comes with instructions, when we are attentive enough to notice.

Every life is a love story, but few of us know what love is until the story is nearly over.

Attention is the most concrete expression of love. What we pay attention to thrives. What we do not pay attention to withers and dies. What will you pay attention to today?

On a perfect day in your perfect little world (and it's always perfect) there is breakfast time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time, snack time, dinnertime, bath time, story time, and bedtime. There is time for everything when you are the timekeeper.

When we liberate ourselves from the idea of parenting success, we liberate our children from failure, all without accomplishing a single thing.

Now is the only cure for then.

Quite the narration in your head, even for a moment, and see for yourself that life is life, and not one minute of it is a retelling or a foretelling. Some things happen; some things don't. That's what makes it all worth seeing, no matter where it goes or how it ends. There is no spinmeister steering it all to a forgone conclusion.

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.

What if you suddenly saw through all your fear and ignorance, your restless craziness, and realized that you already possess what you are looking for because you already are everything you are looking for?

True faith is not hard at all. It is soft in its resilience, yielding in its certitude — the vehicle for absolute grace.

This mind is an amazing thing. It can conjure love from the scent of orange blossoms, peace from a dry breeze, and joy from a patch of grass on a summer day.

Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.

Happiness is not a science, an art or an outcome. It can't be qualified, procured or consumed. It's not invented, but comes naturally made from mud, honeysuckle, pitted olives, and doting grand dads...it's what we are when we are utterly ourselves in unaffected ease.

Practice acceptance on yourself so you can be kinder with your child. Practice nonjudgmental awareness of your life so you can save your loved ones from the cruelty of your own impossible standards and your hard-hearted disappointment. Practice greater faith and lesser blame. Take this blink of time when you are still stumbling at the gate, still awkward at the tasks, to turn down the sound and tumble freely in a state of grace. Life

Mine is not the faith of wishful thinking. It's faith with arms and legs, days and nights, eyes and ears.

We can handle anything when we exchange our worries and fears for alertness and spontaneity, when we focus solely on what is in front of us, and when we leap into the sheer wonder of the unplanned life.

You have to step through the gate, the false barrier of your critical mind, to see all the ways we habitually reject the very place our lives have landed us. And then, we have to stop plotting an escape. That's what practice is for: staying put.

I never ask myself if it's worth it, and that's how I know it is.

At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child. —Dogen Zenji, Mountains and Waters Sutra

You can't fill a hole that doesn't exist.

I went because the nights are numbered and I do not know the count.