Similar thoughts to yesterday morning’s post – this time from the Zen tradition – on staying close to what is actually happening, moment by moment, rather than worrying about what may happen. Sometimes it may not be what we would want, so our practice is to see if we can open to it and acknowledge it’s happening, even if we do not like it. It also encourages us to meet every person today with fresh eyes, rather than immediately reducing them to history which we have had with them, or to what we have come to “expect” from them.
The aim of Zen is to focus our attention on reality itself, instead of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality – reality being the ever-changing, ever-growing, indefinable something known as “life,” which will never stop for a moment for us to fit it satisfactorily into any rigid system of pigeonholes and ideas.
Alan Watts
Mindfulbalance 
I challenged myself when I met a friend,acquaintance, family member – to imagine that I had never met them before. And when meeting people for the first time to meet them with an empty mind – it’s amazing how we small judgements can come into our mind despite having never spoken to someone before. It is also quite staggering how, as a result of the history we have with people, we can block certain avenues of opportunity in really knowing and understanding that person It was an amazingly rewarding exercise and I must say quite challenging at times. This posting has reminded me to keep on looking at people with fresh eyes. I’m hoping it will come naturally to me one day!
Whenever I feel myself starting to get upset or panicked over something, I stop, and notice what is actually going on around me as opposed to what is going through my head. A car goes by, a woman is wearing a hat, I hear birds….
It’s much harder to do this when it comes to desires though….
your post is a good reminder for me.
Thank you.
http://thatwhichreallyis.blogspot.com/