Month: September 2023

Stop counting

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It is not easy to free ourselves from the counting, comparing mind.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come.

It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!


Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 3

Focus on the good

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Michaelmas – the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. A big day in medieval times, with celebrations marking the end of the harvest and the last gathering in. What have we harvested in this year?

Strangely enough, it seems so much easier to remember the hurts, the failures and the rejections. It is much more common to gather our life energy around a hurt than a joy, for some sad reason. Remember the good things even more strongly than the bad, but learn from both. And most of all, as the prophet Baruch said, “rejoice that you are remembered by God” which is the Big Memory that can hold and receive all of the smaller ones.

Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

Slow growing fruition

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For autumn and its slow growing fruition
For that season of ultimate rise and fall
We give thanks.
May we gracefully rise to the occasion of our own falling,
Giving ourselves just enough time to go beyond time
To the great Now
At the quiet center of the turning wheels.

David Steindl-Rast, osb, Thanksgiving Song

Don’t separate yourself

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Simply be with what’s here.

Shinzan Roshi, my teacher constantly uses the Japanese term “nari kiru” to express what we do here. “Nari” means literally “become” and “kiru” means “totally” or “completely”. So once you find tension or stress, don’t separate yourself from it; quite the opposite, be with it, become it. In that moment there is no gap between you and the sensation.

Julian Daizan Skinner and Sarah Bladen, Practical Zen for Health, Wealth and Mindfulness