A bit scattered

Lane Florsheim : If someone is extremely busy, what is the minimum amount of time they can spend meditating or on mindfulness in a day to see benefits?

Deepak Chopra: The people who say they don’t have time, they’re not busy, they’re just scattered.

If you’re present, there’s no fatigue.

As soon as you think of what’s next, there’s fatigue.

As soon as you think “I shouldn’t have done that,” there’s fatigue.

Wall Street Journal, November 2024, Deepak Chopra Doesn’t Believe You’re Too Busy to Meditate

Sunday Quote: wandering

Every walk is a protest against the idea that speed and efficiency are the only measures of a life.

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust

Always seeking

What does seeking look like?

If it seeks an external object, we focus our attention on becoming something. We look for something pleasant or unpleasant to focus our attention on, to generate a view or an opinion about, to generate a sense of importance around the sense of “I,” “me,” and “mine.” Or, the becoming mind seeks an internal object, a subjective sense of “me” being something, me being a success, me being a failure, or at least me being somebody. But all of this – internal or external—is in the
realm of becoming.

We need to able to let go of the fear of letting go, the fear of not being something, not getting what one wants, not being what one thinks one should be or would like to be or have to be, have to get, have to become. There’s a tremendous, almost primal fear, of actually being peaceful, of really letting go, of putting stuff down, of putting identity down, of putting the compulsions down. We want to be able to watch the fear, to see it, and to identify it, to know “that is the source of suffering” the becoming towards, the pull towards becoming and being.

Ajahn Passano, On Becoming and Stopping

Stop trying

Freedom doesn’t come from getting what we want.

It comes from no longer needing life to be a certain way.

The moment we stop trying to control, we meet life freshly.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Living Zen 

Natural

Happiness is our natural state.

Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.

To regain happiness, you don’t have to add anything; you’ve got to drop something.

Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!

Anthony de Mello sj, Awareness

the constant striving

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something you’ve carried all along. All that is needed is to let go of the illusions that obscure your true nature – the stories, the judgments, the constant striving. When you drop these, what remains is what was always there: your original mind, clear as the sky.

People think they must climb a mountain to reach the top, but in Zen, the mountain vanishes, and you discover you were never at the bottom to begin with.


Suzuki roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind