High Everyone 👋 Sometimes anger is the emotion sitting on top of another emotion. Someone says something small. You snap. You become frustrated in traffic. Someone asks you one more question and suddenly you want to scream. Then later you think: “Why did I react like that?” Sometimes the anger isn't really about what just happened. Maybe you're exhausted. Maybe you've been saying yes when you wanted to say no. Maybe you've been carrying something for weeks. Maybe you feel unheard. Maybe you're frightened. Maybe you've been trying very hard to keep everything together. Anger can sometimes be the body's way of saying.....“Enough. I can't keep carrying this in the same way.” I'm not suggesting that every angry reaction has some hidden meaning. But the next time you feel that familiar heat rising, try something different. Before reacting, ask: “What happened just before the anger?” And then: “What else am I carrying today?” You might discover that the person in front of you isn't the whole story. What tends to sit underneath your anger? With Love❤️ Always Mark

Burnout...The self-erasure has been going on for a while, and rest with no agenda feels good. Two stories from the Buddhist canon may help... The tortoise A tortoise was grazing by the river in the evening. A jackal was hunting the same bank. The tortoise saw him coming from far off. So it drew its legs in. Its neck. Its head. Everything. Into its shell. And it stayed there. Passive. Silent. The jackal came and waited. Circled. Watched for a limb. Any limb. Nothing came out. Eventually the jackal got bored and left. He couldn't find a way in. What the sutta doesn't spell out The tortoise didn't defeat the jackal. It didn't fight. Didn't run. Didn't outsmart him. It just closed. In Pali, the word for the tortoise drawing in its limbs is samodahati. The word for a meditator entering absorption is samādahati. Almost the same word. The tortoise withdrawing isn't cowardice. It isn't collapse. It isn't giving up on life.....It's samādhi. It's the same movement the mind makes when it gathers itself in and rests. When you're burned out, every limb of you is stretched out. Your attention. Your care. Your energy. Your availability. All of it extended into the world, waiting to be grabbed. The tortoise's wisdom isn't that it hides. It's that it knows when to stop extending. You are allowed to close You are allowed to be unavailable Not forever. Just until the jackal leaves The blind monk Anuruddha was one of the Buddha's closest disciples. He pushed so hard in his practice that he went blind. He kept going anyway. One night he was mending his robe. His eyes were useless. He couldn't see the needle's eye. So he thought... Let someone who has realised the truth thread this needle for me. The Buddha heard the thought. He came. He said, Bring it here. I'll thread it. Anuruddha recognised his voice and said, almost joking, Worldly people pursue merit. I just want to thread my needle. The Buddha threaded it anyway. Then he said something I can't get past. He told Anuruddha his own work of helping wasn't finished. That no one who has realised the truth ever stops being available to those still walking.

Hi everyone, please help me give a warm welcome to @Ryan Clark 🙏🏻