Happiness is permanent. It is always there. What comes and goes is unhappiness. If you identify with what comes and goes, you will be unhappy. If you identify with what is permanent and always there, you are happiness itself.
Sri H. W. L. Poonja, 1910 – 1997, Indian sage
All Saints Day, starting a month were there is an emphasis on simplifying, remembering and integrating, imitating the slower pace of nature. This is somewhat different to the current fashion of accumulating and rushing around at this time, as the main shopping festivals arrive.
Maybe a side effect of the pandemic this year will be to slow things down and remind us of what is important
The man to whom little is not enough
will not benefit from more.
Saint Columbanus, 540 – 615, Irish monk, missionary and founder of monasteries.
One is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence of greed.
Gurdjieff, 1866- 1949
This evening is the most important Celtic feast of the year – Samhain -which celebrates the end of the year – with its light and growth – and the start of a new period, marked by darkness and rest. These themes are somewhat reflected in the celebration of Halloween.
These days the mind has plenty of material to create fears, from the resurgent virus and its impact on the economy, to politics and divisions. These outside events can enter our minds as fearful agitated energies:
We create big problems for ourselves by not recognizing mind energies when they arrive dressed up as ghosts. They are like the neighbor’s children disguised as Halloween ghosts. When we open the door and find the child next door dressed in a sheet, even though it looks like a ghost, we remember it is simply the child next door. And when I remember the dramas of my life are the energies of the mind dressed up in the sheet of a story, I manage them more gracefully.
Sylvia Boorstein
Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls….
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
Philip Booth, 1925 – 2007, American poet, First Lesson
It’s helpful to realize that this body that we have,
that’s sitting right here right now – with its aches and pains –
is exactly what we need to be fully human,
fully awake, fully alive.
Pema Chodron
Very similar to the wisdom tradition in Ecclesiastes, a long perspective for these uncertain times:
Everything under heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be controlled.
Trying to control leads to ruin. Trying to grasp, we lose.
Allow your life to unfold naturally. Know that it too is a vessel of perfection.
Just as you breathe in and breathe out, there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe and a time for being in danger.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, v 29
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