We can only be where we are: Right here, right now.
Zen practice is to accept that place with calm.
We cannot always be master of the situation, but we can always be master of ourselves.
Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7: All Zen All the TIme
Month: July 2018
Bursting
When we dare to show up and be fully present, grace and wonder and mystery start to appear, even in the midst of pain. Not as planned dreams, or as images of lovers, or as scripts of success designed by our fantasies of ourselves. But as oddly shaped pods of vitality bursting to multiply and bring us further into the mystery of living.
Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk.
Of and from
Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people’s freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.
Ajahn Brahm, Opening the Door of Your Heart
Sunday Quote: Contentment comes from within
Every moment is an opportunity to come home…
Make an island of yourself,
make yourself your refuge;
there is no other refuge.
Digha Nikaya, 16
Why we are always restless
The creator of the universe loves circles:
time and space are circles, the day is a circle, the year is a circle, the earth is a circle.
But when creating and fashioning the human heart, the creator only created a half-circle, so that there is something ontologically unfinished in human nature.
John O’Donohue
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,
we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished.
Karl Rahner, sj., Catholic theologian
Take refuge
Training in mindfulness allows our minds to have a choice. At the moment in which you pause and realize that these thoughts are not really serving me, you have the option to come back to presence. This process of choosing becomes more powerful as you realize how thoughts can create suffering and separation. They create an “us” and a “them.” They create judgment and end up making us feel bad about ourselves.
In those moments when you’re lost in thought, what if you could pause and say, “OK, it is just a thought” That is revolutionary. That can change your life! Each time we recognize thinking and come back into the present moment with gentleness and kindness, we are planting a seed of mindfulness. We are creating a new habit – a new way of being in the world. We quiet down the incessant buzz of thoughts in our mind. We take refuge in what is true – the aliveness and tenderness and mystery of the present moment – rather than in the story line of our thoughts.
Tara Brach
Mindfulbalance 