To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness. … Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
photo jarno
It takes three things to create a sense of significant being:
God,
a soul,
and a moment.
And the three are always present.
Rabbi Abbrahm Joshus Heschel
photo jack lea
Every day, we give precedence to our mind’s thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, “It better not rain today because I’m going camping” or “I better get that raise because I really need the money.” Notice that these bold claims about what should and shouldn’t be happening are not based on scientific evidence; they’re based solely on personal preferences made up in our minds. Without realizing it, we do this with everything in our lives — it’s as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes and dislikes. If it doesn’t, surely something is very wrong. This is an extremely difficult way to live, and it is the reason we feel that we are always struggling with life.
Michael SInger, The Surrender Experiment
photo Irish Defense Forces
An ancient tale tells how Karamita met the Buddha but did not recognize him. He asked the “stranger” to explain the Buddha’s teachings to him, but did not like them. He then asked him if he had actually ever heard these ideas directly from the Buddha’s lips himself, to which the Buddha with a smile, answered no. Ajahn Amaro comments on this episode:
Ajahn Chah often said that this is a position we often find ourselves in – face to face with the Buddha, sharing a room together, spending hours and hours in deep conversation and not realizing who this is. The truth of life is staring us in the face, but because we have already got programmed with something else that we want and expect, we are missing out on the lessons that life is actually able to teach us.
Ajahn Amaro, Silent Rain
photo alex proimos
I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have entered a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something outside the woods?
Thoreau, quoted in Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal
photo james petts
Go forth on your path,
As it exists only through your walking
Saint Augustine, Sermon 169.
