There’s a “smarmy Stuart Smalley” quality to the affirmations I posted yesterday, writes faithful reader Pacific231. As an antidote, she or he suggests discussing Buddhist “pith” teachings. Great idea. A pith saying is a distilled lesson, a gist, a bit of wisdom boiled down to its essence. In the same way that “pith” can also refer to a flower’s central artery, a pith teaching is a realization central to growth. Like the affirmations I linked to yesterday, these sayings can be repeated aloud or silently, or posted somewhere you’ll see them regularly. To get you started, some samples from an article on pith by Lama Surya Das:

Everything is pure and spontaneously accomplished from the outset.

Let go and let be.