This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.
Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481, Zen Buddhist monk and poet.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
Samuel Beckett, 1906 – 1989, Worstward Ho!
Going forward
Year: 2021
Loving well and living fully
In the stress and complexity of our lives, we may forget our deepest intentions. But when people come to the end of their lives and look back, the questions that they most often ask are not usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or “How many books did I write?” or “What did I build?” or the like. If you have the privilege of being with a person who is conscious at the time of his or her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple, “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?”
These simple questions go to the very center of spiritual life. When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears have limited us, and we can see the many opportunities for our hearts to open. Have we let ourselves love the people around us, our family, our community, the earth upon which we live? And, did we also learn to let go? Did we learn to live through the changes of life with grace, wisdom, and compassion? Have we learned to shift from the clinging mind to the joy of freedom?
Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
A way of going about
I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not.
All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it,
I see them carried away headlong, serious and obsessed,
in a general rush,
unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.
And all the while they claim to be
just on the point of attaining happiness….
Chuang-tzu, Chinese philosopher, 4th century BC
New month: we get lost
Zen Master Genshu Watanabe (1869 – 1963) in his last years called to his bedside a monk who had recently become a disciple. The master asked, “How can one go straight on a steep mountain road of ninety-nine curves?” When the young disciple replied “I don’t know”, he was told, “Walk straight by winding along”.
When told to walk straight, we stupidly think we have to cross mountains, hills, rivers and the sea in a straight line. Ignoring traffic lights, we dash off like a race car, looking neither left nor right. But we only deceive ourselves into thinking we progress as we lurch forward. Instead, “Go straight by winding along”
Shundo Aoyama, Zen Seeds
Riches, in the ordinary
It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
Jane Hirshfield, It Was Like This: You Were Happy [extracts]
Sunday Quote: Precious
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is within our power.
Emily Dickinson, In this short Life that only lasts an hour
Mindfulbalance 