The World is always partly Veiled

Komorebi (木漏れ日) is a beautiful Japanese word for the light filtering through trees – everchanging – reminding us of the fleeting uniqueness of each moment.

Understanding this leads to a contentment with the Universe and with oneself.

Not a bad philosophy for a New Year…

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees

Look to the future

We are not victims of the past; but rather, authors of our own purpose.

No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure.

We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences – the so-called trauma – but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes.

We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining

Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked

time arises and passes away

We use pleasant and unpleasant feelings to measure our success or failure. If we experience something pleasant, we think we’ve succeeded. If we experience an unpleasant feeling, we think we’ve failed.

When our minds cling to the nature of experience in a personalized way, we end up running around trying to prop up a sense of a satisfied happy self, or reinventing ourselves as miserable and hopeless.

The practice is to look at things from the lens of our experience and seeing their impermanent, uncertain, changing nature…. they’re arising, they’re ceasing, they’re arising, they’re ceasing.

Ajahn Pasanno , On Becoming and Stopping

Sunday quote: Questions

There are years that ask questions,

and years that answer them

 Zora Neale Hurston, 1891–1960, American novelist, short-story writer and folklorist, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Put them down

Especially at this time of year…

There are two kinds of thoughts that dominate almost all humans: thoughts revolving around our own history and thoughts revolving around our own future

Try putting them down, just for a bit.

See if you can greet some part of life more immediately, here and now.

Björn Natthiko Lindeblad. I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms From Life as a Forest Monk

the angel’s hand

No heaven can come to us, unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this precious little instant. Take peace.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendour, woven of love, and wisdom, and power.

Welcome it, greet it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it.

Christmas Letter attributed to Fra Angelico, 1396 – 1495.

I was fortunate to see the extraordinary exhibition of his works in Florence earlier this year