Year: 2021

Cherish being alive

Karl Duffy9 Comments

Got news yesterday of the sudden death of an old friend, who I had not seen in over 18 months due to pandemic restrictions. It made me think of the choices we have as to where we invest our energy and our thoughts. Life can pass us by, and we waste a lot of it rehashing our familiar litany of fears, tired old stories and self-doubts.

In Zen temples there is a small wooden board called a “han” that is struck with a mallet to signal that it is time for some part of the daily routine. It might have the words “Shoji jidai” written on it in ink. Have you ever seen this? The words mean “life is full of fortune and misfortune, but cherish being alive, every single day. Life will pass you by“

Come now, open your eyes.

What kind of day should we make today?

Shunmyo Masumo, Zen: The Art of Simple Living

Sunday quote: Happiness

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What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. 

Mary Oliver, Hum

Movement

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Restrictions have eased and some travel can finally resume, even if for work. Outward movement allows us to observe inner, ongoing, movement of the mind which is always wanting, and trying to fix life the way we would like to find it. Familiar places and yet changed. We like to know where we are going, but physical journeys can be planned, the inner journey less so.

Whales follow
the whale-roads.
Geese, roads of magnetized air.

Yet how often
the heart
that set out for Peru
arrives in China,

Steering hard.
consulting the charts
the whole journey.

Jane Hirshfield, China

The only life

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We need to have the courage to follow our heart:

Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats.

If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.

That’s the only advice you can give anybody. 

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Accepting the grace

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The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.

Our Beloved has bowed there knowing
you were coming.

I could tell you a priceless secret about
your real worth dear pilgrim.
Any unkindness to yourself,
any confusion about others,
will keep one
from accepting the grace, the love!

Hafiz, Persian Sufi poet

Happier people

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When people ask, “Well, how shall we practice this gratefulness?” ….there is a very simple kind of methodology to it: Stop, look, go. Most of us — caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.

And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in…. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.

David Steindl-Rast, How to Be Grateful in Every Moment (But Not for Everything)