If we are willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.
This is the first step on the path.
Pema Chodron
Our situation
Remaining unmoved
Letting anxious energy pass through without compulsively converting it into action.
The ocean is filled by many rivers:
it is ever being filled yet remains unmoved.
So too the one in whom waves of wanting arise
yet who does not identify with them
remains peaceful.
Bhagavad Gita 2.70,
Sunday Quote: Letting Autumn Teach Us About Life
We can get so caught up in the “drama” of our life and our work that we fail to be present for what is in front of us. How many autumns do we truly experience?
世事一场大梦，人生几度秋凉
The affairs of the world are but a great dream;
how many times do we feel the coolness of autumn?
Su Shi, 1037 -1101, Chinese Song-dynasty poet
When Nothing Is Missing
Eternity is not somewhere beyond this life. It is this moment when we stop reaching backward and forward. When thought stops measuring time, the eternal is simply what remains: entirely present, always.
Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.
Wendell Berry, From Leavings.
Wendell Berry died on Monday aged 92. He was an activist, a poet and a farmer whose poems, as one writer said, “should be read as part of a spiritual practice and as poems, in some sense, devoted to dwelling, to living thoughtfully in one place“
Beyond the confines of labels
Just as a flame blown out by the wind
Goes to rest and cannot be defined,
So the wise person, freed from name and form
Goes to rest beyond all reckoning.
The Buddha, Sutta Nipāta 4.6
The Buddha often used the image of a flame going out – not destroyed, but freed from conditions. Likewise, the liberated mind is not annihilated but beyond all definitions.
Ajahn Amaro, The Island
Open door
Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark.
That’s where the most important things come from,
where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Mindfulbalance 