In front of you

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This message is consistent across all wisdom traditions.

“Sit in your cell and it will teach you everything,” they said. The point was that unless a man could find God here, in this one place, his cell, he would not find him by going somewhere else.

Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers

The monk asks for ultimate meaning. The answer is not in metaphysics but in noticing what is right in front of him

A monk asked Zhaozhou,
“What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher’s coming from the West?”

Zhaozhou replied,
“The cypress tree in the courtyard.”

Kōan Case 37 of The Gateless Gate, attributed to Zhaozhou Congshen (Joshu), 778 – 897

Here

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You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell.

You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sandheap.

You must have so good an appetite as this, or else you will live
in vain.


Henry David Thoreau, from his journal entry of 25 January 1858.

A simple cup of tea

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We do not turn away from difficulties or or injustice, but neither do we surrender to despair. If we can have a heart wide enough to hold both, the ordinary becomes sacred.

Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart

and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun.

Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

We choose

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What we need to know is already known within.

Sometimes life circumstances require [that] a therapist…embodies the permission-granting authority figure, the simulacrum of an empowering parent, but even that does not always work.

Sooner or later, a person has to understand and revisit the basics: we are accountable for the life we have lived or not lived; we are summoned to choice, courage and perseverance in living this life. From that recognition, the necessity of permission becomes more than obvious; it becomes the vital oxygen we must breathe or we choke to death on the fumes of the unlived life

James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second half of the Journey

Fleeting

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Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! ……

We must become that moment….…

forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.

Paul Cézanne

Contentment

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Much of our dissatisfaction comes from mentally living in the future or the past rather than inhabiting the present. Here, two Jungian therapists suggest that contentment comes from bringing one’s full presence to the task or the experience immediately before one.

St. Benedict, an Italian monk of the early sixth century and founder of the Benedictine order, had a powerful approach to staying in the present.

The word novice comes from medieval Latin, and it means to be a beginner, a person who is new to an activity.

St. Benedict instructed novices to take a special vow – a vow of fidelity to the moment.

Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Contentment: A Way to True Happiness.