Month: March 2023

The nature of our presence

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To meditate is often to move through a land without paths.

In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves – There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind’s eye much wider…

Mindfulness …means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.

from Christophe Andre’s lovely book, Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment through Art

Trying too hard

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If we are honest, many of us consider ourselves to be rather lazy, still haunted by those school reports that said “must try harder!” So it might surprise you if I suggest that much of what we do comes unstuck not because we don’t try hard enough, but because we try too hard, or at least try too hard in the wrong sort of way. We aim too high, too quickly, being prematurely concerned with correctness and results at the expense of practice and process.

Where does this perfectionist task-master come from? I suspect it is the highly toxic combination of a lack of confidence and a subtle sense of unworthiness. So instead of wholeheartedly embracing things, as is our birthright, we snatch at life in a sort of smash-and-grab raid before those in authority deem us imposters and ask us to leave, preferably by the back door

Manjusvara, 1953 – 2011 English-born Buddhist writer

Relax the resistance

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There is a saying attributed to Lao-tzu in which he defines a great being as someone who encounters difficulties – but never experiences them.

This is because problems are problems when we’re trying to find an answer to them or when we’re trying to get away from them. Problems are problems as long as we have the idea that there shouldn’t be any. But when problems, difficulties, obstacles and hindrances are taken as food – something that you learn to chew over, digest and take in – they become part of life, rather than something outside attacking you, something to be blamed.

But as long as we think about ourselves as being separate from what happens and from each other, we remain tiny and frightened. Handled wisely, the problem that confronts you, the issue or the person you want to keep out offer opportunities for you to grow larger.  Relax the resistance, learn, and you’ll grow.

Ajahn Sucitto

Sunday Quote: listen

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I tried to discover, in the sounds of forests and waves, words that others could not hear, and I opened up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

[Je tâchais de découvrir, dans les bruits des forêts et des flots, des mots que les autres hommes n’entendaient point, et j’ouvrais l’oreille pour écouter la révélation de leur harmonie.]

Flaubert, November