Category: Be fully present

In this ordinary life

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On Sunday during his sermon in Bolton Abbey,  Fr Michael said that an awareness of goodness can strike at any moment, cutting through our complacency and reminding us that, deep down, there is wonder at the heart of our experience, even  when we struggle and cannot see it.  He saw it in the tender care of a cow for its new-born calf. Merton saw it in the swallows flight:

There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life, just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts. See within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me. It was magical.

We are already one, yet we know it not

Thomas Merton,

This day (this month) contains all

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Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it as the axis on which the world revolves

Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life.

The Japanese call this attitude Ichi-nichi issho:

‘Each day is a lifetime.’

Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7

What to remember in a time of change

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A similar theme, this time from the Christian tradition:

Nothing lasts. No single thing can consume our entire life’s meaning. No single thing can give us total satisfaction. Nothing is worth everything: neither past, nor present nor future. It isn’t true that the loss of any single thing will destroy us. Everything in life has some value and life is full of valuable things, things worth living for, things worth doing, things worth becoming, things worth loving again. It is only a matter of being detached enough from one thing to be open to everything else.

The essence of life is not to find the one thing that satisfies us  but to realize that nothing can ever completely satisfy us.

Joan Chittister, After Great Pain: Finding a Way Out

This is how it is 2: Whatever arises must pass away

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File:Lacquer buddha.jpg

Sometimes I’d go to see old religious sites with ancient temple buildings, designed by architects, beautifully built by skilled craftsmen. In some places they would be cracked. Maybe one of my friends would remark, “Such a shame, isn’t it? It’s cracked. ” I’d say: “If that weren’t the case then there’d be no such thing as the Buddha, there’d be no Dharma. It’s cracked like this because it’s perfectly in line with the Buddha’s teaching.

Ajahn Chah

photo sookie

This is how it is 1: No here, no there, no liking and disliking

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File:Canne di bambù (Roma 2005).jpg

The 9th Century Zen Master Siubi was asked “What is the secret of Zen”

“Come back when there is no-one around and I shall tell you”

The inquirer returned and Siubi took him to a bamboo-grove, pointed to the bamboos and said 

“See how long these are. See how short these are”

Suddenly the questioner had a flash of awakening. What did he see? He had a revelation of sheer existence. Where there is revelation, explanation becomes superfluous. Curiosity is dissolved in wonder.

John Welwood: Ordinary magic: Everyday life as Spiritual Path

 

The beauty of the new

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How frightened we are of the new, of the unknown! We like to remain enclosed in our daily habits, routines, quarrels and anxieties. We like to think in the same old way, take the same road, see the same faces and have the same worries. We dislike to meet strangers, and when we do we are aloof and distraught.  We move within the walls of our own thought; and when we do venture out, it is still within the extension of those walls. We have never an ending, but always nourish the continuous. We carry from day to day the burden of yesterday;

Can the joy of yesterday ever be repeated today? The desire for repetition arises only when there is no joy today; when today is empty, we look to the past or to the future. The desire for repetition is desire for continuity, and in continuity there is never the new. There is happiness, not in the past or in the future, but only in the movement of the present.

Krisnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series 1