Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself
or get anywhere else,
but simply to realize where you already are.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you Go, There you are.
Category: Be fully present
Seeing today for the first time
Do not say, ‘It is morning,’
and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time
as a newborn child that has no name.
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
Everything comes to us that belongs to us
if we create the capacity to receive it.
Faith is the bird that feels the light
when the dawn is still dark.
From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play and forgets the priest.
I have become my own version of an optimist.
If I can’t make it through one door,
I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door.
Something terrific will come
no matter how dark the present.
Rabindranath Tagore
Being where you are
When snow falls and slows down the traffic, we get plenty of opportunities to practice mindfulness, here explained in its simplest form. Often our way is blocked and we are forced to stay where we are for a long time. Being with our life “as it is” is the key to our practice, even when we don’t particularly want to be there:
You don’t need to try to get anywhere when you practice meditation. You only need to really be where you already are and realize it (make it real). In fact in this way of looking at things there is no place else to go, so efforts to get anywhere else are ill-conceived. They are bound to lead to frustration and failure. On the other hand, you cannot fail to be where you already are. So you cannot ‘fail’ in your meditation practice if you are willing to be with things as they are.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living
On staying open today
A lot of the time we practice with what we don’t know, rather than what we do. Some situations in life, or in our day, are not clear. Our practice is to hold open a space, not rushing the answer, allowing the situation or the person to go through the necessary process at its own pace.
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Erich Fromm
Check out this new project
I am continually amazed by the quality of some of the blogs out there and the creative ways that people reflect on their lives. Here is a new project for this year which you may like to bookmark. Called A Year of Being Here, they have set out to publish a mindfulness poem, one for each day of the year, to bring a space for reflection and inspiration into our lives. It is well worth reading.
You can find them at http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/
Subday Quote: Not always thinking about life
We must be content to live,
without watching ourselves live.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
