We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous
as much through exile as homecoming,
as much through loss as gain,
as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
David Whyte
Month: March 2018
Sunday Quote: Underneath the chatter
The simplest sentences contain the most challenging teachings…
Activate the mind without dwelling on anything
The Diamond Sutra
A Celtic blessing
This old Celtic prayer from Scotland is appropriate for two reasons today – the feast of Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland and because of the weather we have had this week:
May the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly;up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.
Amen.
Our actual path is unchartered
What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck?
The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally had a ground, path, and fruition. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal. This path has one very distinct characteristic: it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by-moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment-by-moment and at the same time drops away behind us.
When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable.
Pema Chodron
How to overcome fear
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
A fresh way of seeing things
Starting over, being open to all possibilities, not being bound by our familiar conclusions:
To observe anything – your mind must be free of any conclusion, any previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot possibly see ‘what is’. Isn’t that so? If I want to learn about you I must observe. I must observe, listen and not come to any conclusion. Conclusion is the image which divides you and me. So to observe, there must be no image, no conclusion, no formula. And in that lies our difficulty, because we live according to formulas, a formula set by another or a conclusion which we have come to according to our conditioning and experience. So can the mind be free of every conclusion, because a conclusion is in the field of time which is the past? You can’t conclude something about the future. You can conclude about the future according to your past conditioning, therefore your conclusion is always based on the past – past knowledge, past experience… various forms of knowledge.
So can the mind, to investigate something which is not of time, be free of conflict so that it can observe completely? This has been the enquiry of man right through the centuries: how is the mind to be so quiet, so still, without any distorting factor in it, so that it is capable of perception without any distortion?
J. Krisnamurti, Fourth Public Talk in New York 7 May 1972
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