The sun goes ’round, the moon goes ’round, the tides and seasons go ’round, people are born and die, and when are we finished?
If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die.
Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.
Wayne Muller. Sabbath, Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest
The paradox of our practice is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave ourselves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another
Barry Magid, Leave yourself Alone
Giving up some conditioned behaviour patterns is also good:
You didn’t come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren’t born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose — paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.
I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn’t bother anyone.
Now I take my turn, as a radical act.
Anne Lamott, Stitches
More on letting go of the normal importance we give to our thoughts.
Emptiness here means a way of perceiving in which one simply notes “There is this”, without adding the presuppositions we usually add to experience in order to make sense of it.
Go straight to the empty and free and vast,
With no pondering what to think.
The previous thought is already extinct,
The following thought does not arise,
The present thought is itself empty.
T’aego, 1301 – 1382. Korean Seon (Zen) Master
Autumn means letting go. A good place to start is with self-critical thoughts:
Stop.
Be silent.
When thought has no customers, thought vanishes.
Nisargadatta Maharaj 1897 – 1981
Don’t prolong the past,
don’t invite the future,
don’t be deceived by appearances,
just dwell in present awareness.
Patrul Rinpoche
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