Our everyday world may have gotten more restricted; This does not necessarily mean less rich.
A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life.
The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon:
The mind must be full of light.
Hong Zicheng, Chinese Philosopher, 1572-1620
When effort is needed, effort will appear.
When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself.
You need not push life about.
Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment,
which is the dying now to the now. For living is dying.
Without death life cannot be.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 – 1981, Hindu Non-Dualist teacher
They don’t grieve over the past,
Nor do they yearn for the future
They live only in the present
That’s why their face is serene
Its from yearning for the future
And grieving over the past
This is how fools become withered
Like a fresh reed that’s been hacked down
The Buddha, Collected Discourses, 1.10
The way of mindfulness is, however, always appropriate to the time and the place, to the way things are in their good and bad aspects.
Then suffering isn’t dependent on the world being good or bad, but on how willing we are to use wisdom in this present moment.
The way out of suffering is now, in being able to see things as they are
Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it Is
He said not “Thou shalt not be troubled, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed,” but he said, “Thou shalt not be overcome.”
It is God’s will that we take heed to these words, that we may be ever mighty in faithful trust in weal and woe.
Julian of Norwich
A poem for this Easter Monday, traditionally in Italy “Lunedì dell’Angelo”, (Monday of the Angel), a day for going for a walk, remembering the road to Emmaus story in the New Testament
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light.
Wendell Berry, Now you Know the Worst
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