To meet everyone and everything through stillness instead of mental noise
is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe.
Eckhart Tolle
Category: Be fully present
Time for ourselves
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurry world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude
Wordsworth, The Prelude
Appreciating the present
Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware five minutes a day, you’re doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, but there is no reality apart from the here and the now. So this is a very concise teaching about zazen [sitting meditation], just a reminder to stay alive and be awake. Notice how much you tend to dwell in the past and speculate about the future; it will help you to practice more in this realm of appreciating your life in this moment.
Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Seeds of A Boundless Life
When thoughts are quietened
For a peaceful meditation, we need not to go to the mountains and streams;
When thoughts are quieted down, even fire itself is cool and refreshing.
Extract from poem by Ch’an monk Tu Kou-hao, used as last words by Keizan Jōkin, abbot of Erinji, just before he was burned alive by soldiers in his temple.
Distraction
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet
The Source is full
Everything you see has its roots
in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.
Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal–
growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?–
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
is springing up from it.
The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry —
This is the endless Ocean!
Rumi, A Garden beyond Paradise
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