Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Category: Inner Life
Uncovering strength, here, within
I have discovered, just as my teachers always told me, that we already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible, here, now, always. We are just uncovering them. We are rediscovering them. We’re not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They’re here. That’s why when we feel caught in darkness, suddenly the clouds can part. Out of nowhere we cheer up or relax or experience the vastness of our minds. No one else gives this to you. People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.
Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap.
Different worlds within
If we become addicted to the externals our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of your inner world. This wholesomeness is natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.
John O’Donohue, Anam Chara.
Under the snow
Since we have our first snow and our first hard frost, and the seeds within the hardened earth lie and wait:
In fall the cricket beneath the rose bush
watches as the roses fall to the very ground that is his kingdom also.
So they’re neighbors, one full of fragrance,
the other the harper of a single dry song.
We call this time of the year
the beginning of the end of another circle,
a convenience and nothing more.
For the cricket’s song
is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given, is given forever.
This is a truth I’m sure of, for I’m older than I used to be,
and therefore I understand things
nobody would think of
who’s young and in a hurry.
The snow is very beautiful. Under it are the lingering
petals of fragrance, and the timeless body of prayer.
Mary Oliver, The Cricket and the Rose
An underlying calm
Meditation is not about trying to create something special, to get to a special state; meditation is more about uncovering what has always been and always is here. One is simply trying to bring external conditions into alignment with that fundamental reality of human nature.
Ajahn Amaro, Finding the Missing Peace
Where the real learning is to be found
Those who just read books cannot understand the teachings and, what’s more, may even go astray. But those who try to observe the things going on in the mind, and always take that which is true in their own minds as their standard, never get muddled. They are able to comprehend suffering, and ultimately will understand all the teachings. Then, they will understand the books they read.
Buddhadasa Bhikku
We should not merely expend all our energy collecting pieces of information, but make an effort to experience their validity through insight in our daily life.
Geshe Rabten
Mindfulbalance 