Emptiness is not something sacred in which to believe.
It is an emptying: a letting go of the fixations and compulsions that lock one into a tight cell of self that seems to exist in detached isolation from the turbulent flux of life.
Stephen Batchelor
We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.
Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov
Ajahn Buddhadasa, a colleague of Ajahn Chah, made a point of directing his students to look for nirvana in the simplest ways, in everyday moments. “Nirvana,” he would say, “is the coolness of letting go, the inherent delight of experience when there is no grasping or resistance to life. It is always available. Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Instead we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease…In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed and well. Why don’t we feel thankful for this everyday nirvana?”
Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart, Buddhist Psychology for the West.
What are these false beliefs that block you from happiness? Here are some examples: Happiness will come if you manage to change the situation you are in and the people around you. Not true. You stupidly squander so much energy trying to rearrange the world. If changing the world is your vocation in life, go right ahead and change it, but do not harbor the illusion that this is going to make you happy. What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. As well search for an eagle’s nest on the bed of an ocean, as search for happiness in the world outside of you. So if it is happiness that you seek you can stop wasting your energy trying to cure your baldness or build up an attractive body or change your residence or job or community or lifestyle or even your personality. Do you realize that you could change every one of these things, you could have the finest looks and the most charming personality and the most pleasant of surroundings and still be unhappy? And deep down you know this is true but still you waste your effort and energy trying to get what you know cannot make you happy.
Anthony de Mello
The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are! Let form be just form, let sound be just sound, let thought be just thought….If we think and feel in this way, then there is detachment and separateness. Our thoughts and feelings will be on one side and our heart will be on the other. Just like oil and water – they are in the same bottle but they are separate.
Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart
C’est la Nuit qu’il est beau de croire à la lumière
It is at night that it is beautiful to believe in the light
Edmond Rostand, 1868 – 1918, French poet and dramatist
