Practicing equanimity

"My pleasure or the contentment that I may have experienced out of silence and solitude and freedom from all care does not matter. But I know that is the way I ought to be living: with my mind and senses silent, contacts with the world of business and war and community troubles severed — not solicitous for anything high or low or far or near — not pushing myself around with my own fancies or desires or projects — and not letting myself get hurried off my feet by the excessive current of activity that flows through here."

— Thomas Merton in A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals edited by Jonathan Montaldo (courtesy of the Spirituality and Practice E-Course on Thomas Merton.)