Mindfulbalance

The fourteenth-century Tibetan teacher Longchenpa talked about our useless and
meaningless focus on the details, getting so caught up we don’t see what is in front of our nose. He said that this useless focus extends moment by moment into a continuum, and days, months, and even whole lives go by. Do you spend your whole time just thinking about things, distracting yourself with your own mind, completely lost in thought? I know this habit so well myself. It is the human predicament.

Pause practice can transform each day of your life. It creates an open doorway to the sacredness of the place in which you find yourself. The vastness, stillness, and magic of
the place will dawn upon you, if you let your mind relax and drop for just a few breaths
the storyline you are working so hard to maintain. If you pause just long enough, you can reconnect with exactly where you are, with the immediacy of your experience.

In any moment you could just listen. In any moment, you could put your full attention
on the immediacy of your experience. So, what is the most important thing to do with each day? With each morning, each afternoon, each evening?

It is to leave a gap

Pema Chödrön, How to Make the Most of your Day

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