A person knows when they have found their calling
when they stop thinking about how to live and begin to live.
Thomas Merton
Category: Be fully present
Stillness through non-interference.
Ajahn Chah would explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects — sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions — flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness, which is the mind’s own nature. This policy of non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.
Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat
If you are attentive
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.
If you are attentive, you will see it.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
Grounded
Our bodies know they belong,
It’s our minds that make our lives so homeless.
John O’Donohue
An active state
People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state – it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
Abraham Heschel
…or failing to notice
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change
until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
R.D. Laing
