Category: Be fully present

What we are looking for is already here

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We can often feel that our inner nature is rather dim or discouraged or that we are wandering in darkness, hoping sometime soon to reach clarity.

Today, December 8th, is Rohatsu, the day that the Buddha is said to have awakened, or attained enlightenment. In other words, he saw into the true nature of life, and through this, we are told, “the mind found its way to peace”.

It is said he meditated all through the night and in the predawn hours he looked up, saw the morning star, and exclaimed:

How Wonderful, Everything is already awake. How magnificent! 

Thoughts prompted by a dharma talk given by David Rynick entitled Transcendent Enlightenment

Not limiting oneself

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Forget distinctions

Leap into the boundless

and make it your own.

Zhuang Zhou, Chinese philosopher, 4th century BC

a life without regret

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December 6 is the feastday of the legendary Saint Nicholas, traditionally a big celebration in the Low Countries, Germany and Eastern Europe. Most children have a natural sense of wonder and adventure which life has a tendency to erode.

Twenty years from now

You will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do

than by the ones you did.

Mark Twain

Dwelling in preconceived notions

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Dwelling nowhere, the mind comes forth.
 The Diamond Sutra

Working with this koan alters how I might meet the world in two ways. In one twist, the koan takes my attention to my thoughts and opinions about what I come into contact with each moment… – beyond the confines of what I can conceive of or label. The fact that I take mundane shrubs, trees, stray cats, and rain squalls for granted or even consider them to be inconvenient nuisances at times is something the koan quietly forces me to examine more closely. What would life be like without these images, moments, and experiences? Do I create an inner world in which only some of what is present makes it through my ingrained mental filters? If yes, what would happen if I deconstructed these borders and removed them? Maybe everything that graces my life has a subtle extraordinariness and that allowing this connection to blossom on its own is a practice that takes place naturally when I just begin to notice.

Don Dianda, author of See for Your Self: Zen Mindfulness for the Next Generation

Let nothing disturb you

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From the beginning

the flying birds have left

no footprints on the blue sky

Musō Soseki, 1275 – 1351, Zen Buddhist Monk, calligraphy artist and garden designer,  1275 – 1351

Created anew

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Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Mary Oliver, Morning Poem