You will never experience the future.
You are always and only in the present moment
If you’re waiting on the future to feel joy, you will never feel joy
Katherine Morgan Schlafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to Losing control
Always leaning forward
Month: October 2024
abstractions
Anicca [impermanence] is very good for helping us break out of our sense of time. Time is an abstraction. We create it as a linear fund, something that moves forward.
But contemplate that. How long has this week been? Ten days? Some said that yesterday felt like 48 hours. And yet, whats ten seconds of pain? How long is a shower? How long is a cold shower?
Time then is a measure of desire – desire for continuity, desire for a certain outcome. It paralyzes us into expectation and anticipation or dread and worry. We skip over the present moment and get lost in something we imagine as out there in the virtual reality we call the future. But in the purest sense there isn’t any future. We are only ever here
Ajahn Sucitto, What you Take Home with You
Silence
Silence does not mean to push away or avoid all noise;
doing this is resisting the present moment and the joy and liberation it holds.
Silence means to refrain from succumbing to our habitual reactivity that gets in the way of fully experiencing the present moment as it is.
Rebecca Li, Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method
Let go rather than forcing
Turn within
and drop off everything completely
and realization will occur.
Silently dwell in the self, in true suchness, abandoning conditioning.
Open-minded and bright, simply penetrate and drop off everything.
Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091–1157 Chan Buddhist monk, Practice Instructions
I can be happy
I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude, and not on external circumstances.
and that I can live happily in the present moment
simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy
Thich Nhat Hanh
Unseen
There is always something coming to birth
Even when we don’t desire it,
God is ripening.
Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 16
Mindfulbalance 