I love the word pause. . . .
Such a time represents a kind of time that is vanishing: a floating time, completely free of usefulness, suspended between wakefulness and sleep.
This is the time zone of wonder,
when we fall out of the habitual, the taken-for-granted, and are startled by what is.
Noelle Oxenhandler.
It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught.
Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation.
Our discomfort arises from all of our effort to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness.
Pema Chödrön
Another Spring haiku.
Inner contentment arises when we recognise that what we have, right now, is enough. When the mind is calm, the outer world feels aligned with it. We are friends with life and with other people
In the shadow of the cherry blossom,
there is no such thing
as a stranger
Kobayashi Issa, 1763 – 1828.
We cannot control our life. If we are set upon doing so, we have abdicated from peace, which must balance what is desired with what is possible.
As Hokusai shows so memorably, the great wave is in waiting for any boat. It is unpredictable, as uncontrollable now as it was at the dawn of time. Will the slender boats survive or will they be overwhelmed?
The risk is a human constant; it has to be accepted – and laid aside. What we can do, we do. Beyond that, we endure, our endurance framed by a sense of what matters and what does not. The worst is not that we may be overwhelmed by disaster, but to fail to live by principle. Yet we are fallible, and so the real worst, the antithesis of peace, is to refuse to recognise failure and humbly begin again.
Sr Wendy Beckett The Art of Lent: A Painting A Day From Ash Wednesday To Easter
The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle: Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses, it swings from one desire to the next, one conflict to the next, one self-centered idea to the next.
Let this monkey go. Let the senses go. Let desires go. Let conflicts go. Let ideas go. Let the fiction of life and death go.
Just remain in the center, watching.
And then forget that you are there.
Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching
This is another day, Lord.
I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready for whatever it may be.
If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.
Make these words more than words. Amen.
1979 Book of Common Prayer
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