Mindfulness, seeing clearly, means awakening to the happiness of the uncomplicated moment. We complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production.
It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be.
Sylvia Boorstein
It was a nice bright morning here in Ireland and it is always heartening when we see the sun beginning to brighten the sky. So, here are another few words from Mary Oliver, on how darkness, in different senses, can give way to light, and how nature can soothe the spirit. Often at night the fixing side of our mind gets stuck in some problems or challenges we face and it can seem very dark. The light of morning or of nature can sometimes put things into perspective:
All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.
Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings
Use those few seconds when you find yourself willing or even desiring just to take a break from the daily grind to observe your mind rather than drifting off into daydreams. Practicing like this, “one drip at a time,” you’ll find yourself gradually becoming free of the mental and emotional limitations that are the source of fatigue, disappointment, anger, and despair, and discover within yourself an unlimited source of clarity, wisdom, diligence, peace, and compassion.
Yongey Mingpur RInpoche, The Joy of Living
When one door of happiness closes, another opens,
but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society. You may wonder what the best approach is to helping society and how you can know that what you are doing is authentic and good. The only answer is nowness. The way to relax, or rest the mind in nowness, is through the practice of meditation. In meditation you take an unbiased approach. You let things be as they are, without judgment, and in that way you yourself learn to be.
Chogyam Trungpa
By taking a moment to pay attention to something as simple as turning on the water tap, we give ourselves the opportunity to be aware of how things in our lives come, go, and transform, which makes us less likely to take them for granted. Instead, we can, for even a moment, be awake to the transitory blessing they are. And, certainly, we can carry this habit out into the larger world, applying it to whatever we find ourselves doing or encountering.
Turning on the Water: Water flows from high mountain sources.
Water runs deep in the Earth.
Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life.
Thich Nhat Hanh
photo thegreenj
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