(Practice) ……. is not to be found in moving forwards,
nor in moving backwards,
nor in standing still.
This, Sumedho, is your place of nonabiding.
Ajahn Chah, Letter to Ajahn Sumedho
Category: Be fully present
In the ordinary
One of the monks asked a renowned Forest Ajahn: ‘What’s it like to see things as they really are?’ There was an understandable air of expectation in the room: to ‘see things as they really are’ is the vision of the Awakened Mind. What mystical insight was about to be revealed?
‘It’s ordinary’, said the Ajahn in his customary succinct and matter-of-fact way.
Ajahn Sucitto, Awakening: Nameless and Stopped
Step by step
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
In whatever circumstances
La joie réside au plus intime de l’âme; on peut aussi bien la posséder dans une obscure prison que dans un palais.
(Joy dwells in the deepest part of the soul; one can have it in an obscure prison just as much as in a palace)
St Therese of Lisieux
photo of the former prison in Annecy by Emmanuel Boutet
Not going anywhere
Nothing really sticks. When we understand this…we can shift our attention and intention beyond being a thing, having a position and going places. We can witness our life with wisdom; then there is the realization of that which is knowing and insightful and which brings forth a response of compassion, rather than frustration. That shift is the essence of liberation.
Ajahn Sucitto, Turing the Wheel of Truth
photo: vaikoovery
Only present time
The river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
photo: vincent, la rivière Rouvre.
