Month: December 2020

Walk in the dark

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Perhaps the main lesson to be learnt from this year

My teacher Ajahn Chah would often respond to people’s questions, plans, and ideas with a smile and say, ‘Mai neh.’ The phrase means, ‘It is uncertain, isn’t it?’ He understood the wisdom of uncertainty, the truth of change, and was comfortable in their midst….wisdom grows by opening to the truth of not knowing.

For a long time I didn’t understand this. As I matured, I began to see that it is much simpler than this. At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world. With wisdom we allow this not knowing to become a form of trust. St. John of the Cross described it this way, ‘If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.’

Jack Kornfield

Sunday Quote: Our highest art

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To affect the quality of the day,

that is the highest of arts.

Thoreau

Look

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There are things you can’t reach. But
But you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snakes slides away, the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree —
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

Mary Oliver, Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

Space

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A cold and frosty start today here in Ireland. Changing conditions in the weather. We work with the mind to enable it deal with the constant changing conditions in our days.

Meditation is giving a huge meadow to a restless cow.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Behind

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There is a teaching that says that behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased, that which can support and awaken us at any time. 

Pema Chodron

Seek

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The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it.

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929 – 2018, American Author