Three Guides –
No Blame.
Be Kind.
Love Everything.
Terrance Keenan, artist, poet, Zen Buddhist Monk, formerly head monk at the Zen Center of Syracuse.
Guidebook
Year: 2021
How to find where we are going
Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
Thoreau, Walden
Stillness in the wind
I did a retreat last weekend with Ajahn Amaro who emphasized gaining insight into the ever-present dynamic of “I, me and mine”, and developing a mind which is capable of observing these labels
Enlightenment, liberation, depends on the recognition of the radical separateness of awareness – “the one who knows” – and the world of the five khandhas (Sanskrit: skandhas)…The key is training the heart to rest in the various dimensions of knowing, and not becoming entangled in the khandhas.
Here are some words from Ajahn Chah that encompass [these] themes:
“This mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful… really peaceful! Just like a leaf which is still as long as no wind blows. If a wind comes up the leaf flutters. The fluttering is due to the wind – the “fluttering” is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them. If it doesn’t follow them, it doesn’t “flutter.” If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions we will be unmoved.
Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. We must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them; to make it peaceful.
Ajahn Amaro, Like Oil and Water
[The 5 khandhas, or in Sanskrit, skandhas, are form, feeling-tone, perception, thoughts and emotions, and consciousness.]
The faces of others
You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.
One thing is given to man which makes him into a god, which reminds him that he is a god: to know destiny.
When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god…
Hermann Hesse, If the War Goes on: Reflections on War and Politics
Take the leap
There are second thoughts happening each time you act.
There is hesitation, and from that hesitation or gap, you can go backward or forward. Changing the flow of karma happens in that gap. So the gap is very useful.
It is in the gap that you give birth to a new life.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Truth of Suffering and the Path of Liberation
Sunday Quote: Lovelinesss
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day
Evelyn Underhill, 1875 – 1941, English writer on mysticism
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