Commit yourself to a daily practice
your loyalty to that is like a ring at the door
Keep knocking and eventually the joy that lives inside
will look out to see who is there
Rumi
Category: Be fully present
Contain all colours
[There is] a phrase in the Book of Equanimity: “A woven brocade contains all colors”
Birth, old age, illness and death, as well as happiness and misfortune, gain and loss, love and hate – all of these are important tools for weaving the brocade of human life. A brocade cannot be woven with the single color of happiness. Given time, place and occasion, everything “contains all colors”. It is in this way that the Pure Land, the Other Shore, is made manifest.
Shundo Aoyama, Zen Seeds
Letting sorrow drop
As water falls from a lotus leaf
so sorrow drops from those
who are free of toxic craving
Dhammapada 336
The sorrows of life can convince us they are really important. They seem to demand a huge amount of attention. However…if mindfulness practice is mature, we will be able to observe suffering when it arises without becoming too fascinated by it. We will be able to reflect wisely on the reality of the moods we have, not just be sensitive to them. They are not ultimate – they come and go.
Commentary by Ajahn Munindo
Relating to challenges
Unless we live all our lives in the torment of the contradictions, as C.G. Jung insists, then we’re not human. We can’t become whole. If you’re stuck, and you don’t know what to do, stuck between two opposites, and you allow them each to live within you, then a small transformation of the ego takes place. It becomes related to the Self instead of identifying with it.
Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer
Breathe
Bring those spaces into your everyday life, as many as possible. When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, I don’t have time. But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.
Eckhart Tolle, in interview with Oprah Winfrey
Sunday quote: Nowhere to go
Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
Thomas Merton
Mindfulbalance 