Consciously or unconsciously,
we avoid facing things as they are in themselves
and so we want God to open for us a door which is beyond…
(But) to find life’s purpose we must go through the door of ourselves.
Krishnamurti
Category: Be fully present
Sunday Quote: Stop running after
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness
and just be happy
Guillaume Apollinaire.
Just show up
I sometimes say that our monastery in Santa Fe should have a slogan hanging over the gate “Show up”. That’s all we have to do when we meditate – show up. We bring ourselves and all of our thoughts and feelings to the practice of being with whatever is, whether we are tired, angry, fearful, grieving or just plain resistant and unwilling. It really doesn’t matter what we’re feeling; we just come and sit down.
However unbearable any discomfort seems, ultimately everything we experience is temporary. And please make the wonderful effort to show up for your life, every moment, this moment – because it is perfect, just as it is.
Joan Halifax, Being with Dying
Noticing what is here, not what we would like to be here
Similar thoughts to yesterday morning’s post – this time from the Zen tradition – on staying close to what is actually happening, moment by moment, rather than worrying about what may happen. Sometimes it may not be what we would want, so our practice is to see if we can open to it and acknowledge it’s happening, even if we do not like it. It also encourages us to meet every person today with fresh eyes, rather than immediately reducing them to history which we have had with them, or to what we have come to “expect” from them.
The aim of Zen is to focus our attention on reality itself, instead of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality – reality being the ever-changing, ever-growing, indefinable something known as “life,” which will never stop for a moment for us to fit it satisfactorily into any rigid system of pigeonholes and ideas.
Alan Watts
To love the reality of what happens today
Over and over again I see – in myself and in others – the capacity to turn things that do not actually exist – possible events in the future – into real, vivid, scenarios and tangible fears in the present. A huge amount of our anxiety comes from what is not, what “may happen”. The big challenge is to stay with what actually is, not what the mind convinces us could possibly be. Here, two quotations, from completely different traditions, encourage us in this regard today.
Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not. Hearing what is can make you wise. Hearing what is not can drive you mad.
Ghalib, Sufi Poet and mystic, 1797 – 1869
The big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be, and somewhere, to love reality and then discover that God is present.
Jean Vanier, Founder of the L’Arche Communities
Bring compassion to what happens
Meditation is an experiment we are making, bringing us out of our normal habits of intense self-judgment, comparing, and impatience. Mindfulness isn’t about what is happening; it is about how we are relating to what is happening — how much awareness, balance and compassion are bringing to this moment’s experience, whatever it is. For example, it is very likely you will find your attention wandering, not 45 minutes after you first begin, but probably within a few seconds. You get lost in a fantasy, or fall asleep. That is normal and not a sign of failure. What I emphasize is that the critical moment in your meditation is the moment you see you’ve been distracted; instead of falling into our usual habits of self-condemnation, that’s a time we can practice letting go while being kind to ourselves, and work with the renewing power of beginning again.
Sharon Salzberg, Meditation and Mindfulness for All of Us.
