People sacrifice the present for the future.
But life is available only in the present.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Year: 2013
Finding through losing
This is the simple truth
– that to live is to feel oneself lost –
He who accepts it has already begun to find himself to be on firm ground.
José Ortega y Gasset, Who Rules the World.
Seeing life freshly
It’s a Bank Holiday, or long weekend, here in Ireland, so one immediately feels as if there is more time to slow down and take a break from the rushing which the working week inevitably impresses on the mind. A certain space enters, allowing us to see things more lightly, or to see them with eyes that have the room to appreciate them:
Childhood is not a state which only applies to the first phase of our lives in the biological sense.
Rather it is a basic condition which is always appropriate to a life that is lived aright.
Karl Rahner, Catholic Theologian, 1904 – , 1984
Always off balance
Heavy rain this morning in Ireland, after a bright autumn day yesterday. An easy lesson in the inevitability of change and that our real work lies in becoming familiar with movement, not in standing still. Moreover, this constant change allows us develop insight into another learning, namely that we should never expect to really arrive at a competed work and that, as Theologian Karl Rahner said, in this life “all symphonies remain unfinished”. Sitting with this allows us relax in the knowledge that things are never quite perfect, yet still can be complete for that moment:
We realize this life as something always off its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as an alteration. ‘Yes,’ we say at the full brightness, ‘this is what I just meant.’ ‘No,’ we feel at the dawning, ‘this is not yet the full meaning, there is more to come.’ In every crescendo of sensation, in every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fullness that have reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the phenomenon
William James, A Pluralistic Universe
Not getting too fixed today
The real art of conducting consists in transitions
Gustav Mahler.
What is this
At a retreat once in the UK with Martine Bachelor, I heard her talk of a practice which was taught in the monastery where she was as a nun. It seemed simple – to keep repeating the words “What is this” when involved in the different activities of the day. It was an exercise designed to allow the person create a gap or a pause, and notice what was before them, therefore encouraging them to enter more deeply into whatever was happening in that moment. It is a good practice for getting in touch with the felt sense in our body. It slows down the tendency to spin off into our stories and our fears. It develops our ability to fully experience the moment we are having, and this may strengthen our capacity for joy.
All religions point to the fact that being fully present is the only state in which you can wake up—not by somehow leaving.
So you have to find your own simple, grounded language to say that to yourself,
What is this moment, this situation, or this person trying to teach me?
Another one that I love is “This is a unique moment. Maybe I’m not so glad about it because it’s painful, but I don’t want to waste it, because it’s never going to happen again this way.
So let’s taste it, smell it, experience it”.
Pema Chodron
Mindfulbalance 