Every moment offers a choice: cling to the mind’s chatter or relax into the present.
When you stop labelling experiences as “good” or “bad” and simply let life move through you, the weight of resistance lifts.
What remains is a quiet, unshakable joy – the silent hum of existence itself.
This is the bliss of being, always accessible beneath the noise of the self.
Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
On Palm Sunday.
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.
How hard, yet how absurdly easy, it is
to bless instead of curse.
If God appeared at the side of the road,
tired and dusty, and asked,
Would you lend me your donkey,
would you say yes?
Mary Oliver, The Poet Thinks About the Donkey [extract]
Most wisdom traditions hold two insights. The first is that change comes slowly, gradually, through practice, learning to sit and “go slowly” as Anthony learned in the desert. However there are also teaching of insights and conversion coming in a moment, through hearing a word as in Anthony’s case – and frequently in the Zen tradition – or in seeing something, as in this text. In a moment we get a direct experience of the fact we are two things at once and consciousness is transformed:
The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was upon the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me …of his conversion at the age of eighteen.
It was winter, and he saw a tree stripped of its leaves and yet knew that within a little time the leaves would be come again and after that the flowers and then the fruit would appear. In that moment, he got a sense of the care and power of God, an inner awareness which has never since left him.
This sense had given him such freedom and kindled in him such a love… that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years since it had happened.
Brother Lawrence, 1693, The Practice of the Presence of God
My friend Jack Kornfield tells his story of asking a venerable Tibetan meditation teacher for advice many years ago: “There are so many students wanting to be on retreat,” Jack said to the teacher. “I’m teaching continuously, and I’m very tired.” Jack hoped, it seems, that he would be given a special practice for strength – perhaps a mantra. But the teacher said, “Maybe you should take more vacations.”
Almost everyone laughs when they hear that story. It’s funny because it isn’t the answer most people are expecting. It’s also good dharma: life is difficult, the Buddha taught, and it becomes more difficult when we struggle with it. There is no end to challenge. Not everything needs to get solved today.
Sylvia Boorstein, Just Don’t Do It
Peace is within oneself – to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering.
It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, but within
Ajahn Chah
Do not become annoyed when faced with difficulties.
To do so merely adds difficulty to difficulty and further disturbs your mind.
By maintaining a mind of peace and non-opposition, difficulties will naturally fall away
Master Sheng-Yen
Mindfulbalance 