Month: May 2022

The end of negative patterns

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One of our frequent chants includes this phrase: May this holy life lead us to the end of this whole mass of suffering.

Essentially, we’re looking at a way of life, of living. It’s not a particular detail but the whole thing. Of course, we can have special sessions, retreats or occasions within that, but they’re all part of the bigger picture. The big picture is one of purifying kamma, and ending kamma. This means that through our actions and intentions, we purify from delusion, hatred, greed, fear, jealously, mistrust, avarice, ambitions, the whole lot of obsessiveness. It is through this that the mind can be level, open, and realize. Realization can occur; deathlessness. The beauty of this is the very web of training – the forms and instructions we use in order to open and let go – cover our entire way of living.

Ajahn Sucitto

Be patient

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Sometimes things work out when you do not force them, but rather let your inner wisdom make itself clear through a period of quiet or rest.

If any one cannot grasp this matter,

let them be idle

and the matter will grasp them.

Henry Suso, German Dominican friar, 1295- 1366, The Exemplar

Tensions are part of life

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We could say that New Age people in general are addicted to harmony.

The alchemical woodcut says that a child will not become an adult until it breaks the addiction to harmony, chooses the one precious thing, and enters into a joyful participation in the tensions of the world.

Robert Bly, Iron John

Let go

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The sun will set without your assistance

Talmud quote found in H. Polano The Talmud: Selections

Caught in the middle

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“No-thought” does not mean cutting off thinking – it means there is no fixation with regard to the free flow of our thinking. We don’t need to reify or solidify what we experience into my thoughts, my feelings. If self-grasping is present, then thoughts don’t flow. When we suffer, we are caught in the middle of the stories that we’re fabricating, and, in this way, we prolong our suffering.

Guo Gu, Silent Illumination

Schedules

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A Bank Holiday here in Ireland; a non-working day and so a different way in which we relate to time:

So many times I have been unable to listen or to notice what someone was going through or where they were headed because it didn’t meet with my schedule. Patience and timing are inextricably linked. Patience, which we can regard with such excruciation, offers a hidden reward. When we stop watching the pot, we may learn that it boils right on time.

Sometimes my father would forget to wind the big clock, the weights would fall, and time would stop.

We wind the clock. It does not have to wind us.

Barry Boyce, What Time is Now?