We live a lot in our heads, our worries and fears. Meditation involves settling back into the support offered by the breath-in-the-body and getting a feel for the right balance there. This allows us to stay in touch with where we are, which balances the thinking mind’s preoccupation with who we are, with doing and with how we appear.
Living calls for the art of the wrestler, not the dancer
Staying on your feet is all;
there is no need for pretty steps
Marcus Aurelius
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else.
What you must do is this:
“Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.”
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
photo: trou
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.
Rumi, That lives in Us
A miracle is often the willingness to see the common
in an uncommon way.
Noah benShea
I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing
but only know where the rarest wildflowers are blooming
and who goes
and finds that he is smiling not by his own will
Wendell Berry
photo ross
Here is a practice I have been working with for more than a decade. I recite, usually silently, these two sentences:
May I meet this moment fully.
May I meet it as a friend.
These blessing phrases cultivate and sustain a mind of peace and goodwill. For me, they represent the promise of practice. “May I meet this moment fully” expresses my faith that an alert and balanced mind is a possibility for human beings. “May I meet it as a friend” reminds me that my mind’s natural benevolence is my best refuge. Although most of my daily practice has always been the simple practice of alert attention to changing experience, I often begin periods of simple sitting with some repetitions of this two-phrase mantra as a kind of mood-setter, an incliner of my mind toward relaxing.
Sylvia Boorstein, A Bad Day at the Airport
Mindfulbalance 