Month: October 2021

Open the mind and heart

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We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the storyline. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.

Pema Chödrön

Interesting

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In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.

John Cage, quoted in Mark Epstein, Going on Being

Let go

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Try to go a whole seven days without having to control everything, without stressing when things don’t work out as you thought they would or should. As you do this, any time you feel the need to take charge, try to relax out of it, just to see what happens. Look for the good that happened precisely because things didn’t work out the way you thought they would or should.

And take your time. There really is no desperate hurry. When we constantly pursue perfection, our life speeds up. We make hasty decisions and snap judgments…. You’ll likely feel relived, and make better choices.

Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect life

Untroubled

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The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.

The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Sunday quote: Wind

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The plants and flowers
I raised about my hut
I now surrender
To the will
Of the wind

Ryokan 1758 – 1831, Zen Buddhist poet

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Give yourself to the air

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Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

Rilke, You who let yourselves feel