Month: February 2023

The subtle mysteries

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Always be joyful, no matter what you are. With happiness you can give a person life. Every day we must deliberately induce in ourselves a buoyant, exuberant attitude toward life. In this manner, we gradually become receptive to the subtle mysteries around us. And if no inspired moments come, we should act as though we have them anyway. If you have no enthusiasm, put up a front. Act enthusiastic, and the feeling will become genuine.
–

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslau 1772- 1810), Founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement.

It’s how you see

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Zen has an expression, “nothing special.” When you understand “nothing special,” you realize that everything is special. Everything’s special and nothing’s special. Everything’s spiritual and nothing’s spiritual.

It’s how you see, it’s what eyes you’re looking through, that matters.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Become love

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If you want to know God,
become love. If you want
to know others, become love.
If you want to know yourself,
become love. And if you want
to know love, forget all you
thought you knew or needed
to know, and become love.

Meister Eckhart, 1260 – c. 1328, German theologian, philosopher and mystic

A useful short practice

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The first technique I’d like to share – dropping – works to break the habit of being caught up in our thinking minds, lost in thought, and out of touch with our bodies. Dropping is not so much a mediation as a way to cut through the tension-building stream of constant thinking, worrying and speediness. It allows us to land in the present moment, in a grounded and embodied way.

In dropping you do three things at the same time: 1. Raise your arms and let your hands drop onto your thighs. 2 Exhale a loud, big breath. 3. Drop your awareness from thinking into what your body feels.

Just rest there being aware of your body without any special agenda. Feel your body with all its sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, warmth or coolness, pressure, tingling, pain, bliss, whatever comes into your awareness.

So in brief, drop, rest, and relax…let yourself relax from within. Give yourself permission to do nothing.

from the very nice book by Daniel Goleman and Tsonknyi Rinpoche, Why we Meditate: 7 Simple Practices for a Calmer Mind

Sunday Quote: Immersed

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Life is like music for its own sake.

We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Alan Watts

Walk the walk

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An aikido instructor once described to me a test he took for promotion to the next level. Unbeknownst to him at the time, one-third of the test was determined by how he entered the hall and sat down before his name was even called. What the masters were looking for was whether the student was already in a continuous flow entering the hall, or whether he regarded the test as a separate point at which to turn on and impress the teachers.

Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7