There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life, just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts. See within yourself, if you can find it.
I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me. It was magical.
We are already one, yet we know it not
Thomas Merton
Our whole life can pass us by as we wait for something to happen…
You don’t go to heaven, you become heaven.
You don’t go to hell, you become hell.
And it’s happening now.
Richard Rohr
Now every mortal has pain
and sweat is constant.
But if there is anything dearer than being alive,
it’s dark to me.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 428 BC
As long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love. When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love. You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else. As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.
And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.
J. Krishnamurti
The current situation in the world gives rise to many “if onlies” in our minds
Along with our sense of entitlement, we have many specific ideas and expectations about what will make us feel happy. “If only I had the right partner I’d be happy.” “If only I had a better job, or more money, I’d no longer be anxious.” “If only I had a better body I’d be content.” The one thing all of our “if onlies” have in common is an underlying unwillingness to actually be with the present-moment circumstances of our life. Instead, we choose to live in endorphin-producing fantasies about the future. From one point of view this is understandable, in that it’s certainly more comfortable to hold onto our expectations of a different and better reality than it is to be with what is. Yet, where does this leave us? It leaves us living a life that is neither real nor satisfying. But remember, the path to genuine happiness entails first recognizing what blocks it. We have to clearly acknowledge our many “if onlies,” our subtle demands that life be different from what it is.
Ezra Bayda, Beyond Happiness, The Zen Way to True Contentment.
Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new.
Thus life is always new.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
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