Life offers its wisdom generously.
Everything teaches
Not everyone learns
Rachel Naomi Remen
photo Woodstown beach Co.Waterford by tony quilty
Category: Be fully present
Sunday Quote: Looking outside
One way to express the crisis of our time is to say
that most of us have an address
but cannot be found there.
Henri Nouwen
Nowhere to go, Nothing to achieve
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one with oneself.
(La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi)
Michel de Montaigne, Essais Book I, ch. 39
Returning home
Remember that your ‘True Home’ is not found outside yourself, but it is right in your own heart. We do not need to bring home anything for us to feel fulfilled. We have everything we need, right in our heart. We do not need to practice for many years or to travel far to arrive at our true home. If we know how to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration, then with each breath, with each step, we arrive at our true home. Our true home is not a place far removed from us in space and time. It is not something that we can buy. Our true home is present right in the here and now; if only we know how to return and to be truly present to it.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Home is the Way – A Christmas Message
photo randi hausken
Seeing all we have
It is important to emphasize, in discussing meditation … that you shouldn’t start out with some idea of gaining. This is the deepest paradox in all of meditation: we want to get somewhere—we wouldn’t have taken up the practice if we didn’t — but the way to get there is just to be fully here. The way to get from point A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection to the present, which is all we ever have. If your breathing is shallow, your mind and body restless, let them be that way, for as long as they need to. Just watch them. The first law is that everything is constantly changing. No one is saying that the breathing should be some particular way all the time. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation, there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that, and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is. You may think that you want it to change, but that act of acceptance is in itself a major change.
Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing
photo griff le riff
Staying still
A certain brother went to Abba Moses in Scete,
and asked him for some good advice.
And the elder said to him:
“Go, sit in your room, and your room will teach you everything.”
Sayings of the Desert Fathers
I discovered that all of our problems stem from a single cause, – we do not know how to sit at ease in a room alone.
(J’ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose,
qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre)
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and Philosopher, 1623 – 1662, Pensees
photo bujar I gashi
