The ten directions converging,
Each learning to do nothing,
This is the classroom of the Buddha’s training;
Mind’s empty, all’s finished.
P’ang Yün (Layman Pang) died 808, famous lay practitioner of Ch’an
Category: Be fully present
Life is better when we flow
Most of us are persistent. We have persistently tried to change what we cannot, usually a circumstance or someone else’s behavior. Take that energy, that persistence, that determination, that almost obsessive resolve, and persevere with the things you can do. Don’t push. Let go of concern about the seemingly impossible tasks in your life. Softly, steadily, like the rain, let your kind spirit naturally remove the obstacles in your path. Life is better when we flow. But sometimes it takes a persistent flow to change the things we can. Enough water, persistently applied, can be more powerful than rock.
Melodie Beatty, More Language of Letting Go: 366 New Daily Meditations
Sunday Quote: Dazzled
It must be a great disappointment to God
if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day
Mary Oliver, Blue Horses
The quiet ordinary things
Happiness is
in the quiet, ordinary things.
A table,
a chair,
a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages.
And the petal falling from the rose,
and the light flickering
as we sit silent.
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Just so
A similar thought to others this week. We are always gently working on the heart’s capacity to accept life as it actually is
When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept
and he said if he were God
he would have made the world just so and no different.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
What Guides us
It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward.
They think they live by what they want.
But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of.
What they don’t want.
Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
Mindfulbalance 