When we meditate,
we are training the mind to stop feeding a pain pattern
Ruth King, Meditation teacher, Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible
Sunday Quote: What we feed
Month: August 2023
Beware
Ordinariness is a simple presence in this moment that allows the mystery of life to show itself. When Thoreau warns us to “beware of any activity that requires the purchase of new clothes” he reminds us that simplicity is the way we open to everyday wonder.
Ordinariness is interested in what is here and now….the ordinary mystery of breathing or of walking, the mystery of trees on our streets or of loving someone near to us. It is not based on attaining mystical states or extraordinary powers. It does not seek to become something special, but is emptying, listening.
Jack Kornfield, Bringing home the Dharma
Joy in life
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life – just imagine that
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
To see with the heart
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: To love a genuine love.
Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
A lover is always accused of something.
But when they find their love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
Rumi, Night and Sleep
Making waves
Usually we think of our mind as receiving impressions from outside, but that is not a true understanding
The true understanding is that the mind includes everything.
Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble.
You yourself make the waves in your mind
If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm
This mind is called big mind
Shunryu Suzuki roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
What changes everything
Everything changes once we identify with being
the witness to the story,
instead of the actor in it,
Ram Dass
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