The clouds above us come together and disperse;
The wind departs and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can keep us from celebrating?
Lu Wu, 733–804
Month: February 2014
Our shifting energies
The source of our unease is the unfulfillable longing for a lasting certainty and security, for something solid to hold on to. Unconsciously we expect that if we could just get the right job, the right partner, the right something, our lives would run smoothly. [Instead,] we are encouraged to get comfortable with, begin to relax with, lean into, whatever the experience may be. We are encouraged to drop the storyline and simply pause, look out, and breathe. Simply be present for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a whole lifetime, with our own shifting energies and with the unpredictability of life as it unfolds, wholly partaking in all experiences just exactly as they are.
Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap
Really get a sense of
In the ongoing truthfulness of our practice, it is really important to sift through all the static and white noise that the emotions and psychologies are setting up — to really see, to get a handle on, what intention feels like in our nervous system. And the quality of attention — how big, or narrow, or tight we feel, how bound we feel when we’re really occupied with a whole series of thoughts, how our attention bunches up — we start to sense this is, in the bodily sense; we get a real sense of the feel of this and the release of that. This is what we practice. This is the dissolving.
Ajahn Sucitto, What if I get it wrong?
Always starting over
There is only one day left,
always starting over:
it is given to us at dawn
and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Beautiful things
We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us
Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes
photo pauline eccles
Let go
Despite all the recent storms in Ireland, buds are starting to appear on the trees. A lesson in resilience and trust. Most of us are very good at bringing suffering upon ourselves. We turn small issues into problems and then fixate on the worries and anxieties and let them fester and take root inside us. We are less good at simply letting go and letting things develop in their own time.
Sitting quietly,
doing nothing,
Spring comes,
and the grass grows,
by itself.
Matsuo Bashō, 1644 – 1694
photo tim horton
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