Month: November 2024

Not getting stuck in the hassles of each day

Karl Duffy1 Comment

You should train yourself thus: In what is seen, there is only the seen. In what is heard, there is only the heard. In what is sensed, there is only the sensed. In what is understood, only the understood.

This is how you should train yourself. When for you there is in what is seen, only the seen, in what is heard, only the heard, in what is sensed only the sensed and in what is understood only the understood, then there is no you in connection with what is seen, heard, sensed or cognized, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there nor anywhere in-between.

This and only this is the end of stress and unhappiness

The Buddha in the Bāhiya Sutta.

Sunday Quote: everywhere you look

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There is not a particle of life

which does not bear poetry within it.

Flaubert

Just do it

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I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.

Picasso

Derailing the sense of lack

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Enlightenment involves derailing and deconstructing the sense of lack.  

It is getting rid of that piece of psychology that in every moment says, “There’s something else that I should be having right now. There’s something else that I should be right now. There’s somewhere else that I could go right now. There’s somebody else who’s got it better than me right now. I’m not complete right now. I need to be something right now”.

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods

Be happy

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One of my meditation teachers used to end each of our interviews … and say to me, “Remember, Sylvia, be happy.”  I actually for a long time thought it was a salutation, like “have a good day” or something that you say just in a routine kind of a way, and it took me a long time to realize that it was an instruction, “Be happy.”

Not only that it was an instruction but that it was a wisdom transmission –  that happiness was a possibility. I understand that happiness to mean,  the happiness of a mind that’s alert, that’s awake to the amazing potential of being a person in a life, with a mind that’s opened, that sees everything that’s going on, and realizes what an amazing possibility this is, and with a heart that’s open, the heart that responds naturally as hearts do, in compassion, in connection with friendliness, with love, with consolation when it needs to:  

That that’s the happiness of life –  a mind that’s awake, a heart that’s engaged... I want to say that really what I think about when my teacher said to me, “Be happy,” is be awake, be alert, stay in your life, stay present to it. She said at another point, “It’s your life, Sylvia, don’t miss it.” That’s been a very important thing.

Sylvia Boorstein’s keynote speech Stanford University 2005

Rest

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Retire to the centre of your being

which is calmness

Paramahansa Yogananda, 1893 – 1952, Indian-American Hindu monk

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