The way through the world
is more difficult to find
than the way beyond it
Wallace Stevens
Not avoiding
Year: 2021
Open the mind and heart
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
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
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
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
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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