Very like the warm Indian Summer weather we have been having in Ireland this last week, along with a full moon, as the Autumn Equinox approaches:
The rain has ceased, the clouds have passed away, and the weather is bright again.
If your heart is clear, all things in your world become clear.
Hold this passing world lightly, hold yourself lightly
and then the moon and the flowers will guide you along the way
Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Japanese Zen monk and poet
The 14th-century Tibetan master Longchenpa said there are five characteristics we should cultivate in order to practice the four immeasurables:
(1) A fundamental attitude as vast as space;
(2) A mind as constant as the depths of the ocean;
(3) Seeing all occurrences, inner and outer, as mist floating in the sky;
(4) A compassionate attitude as even as the rays of the sun;
(5) Sensing negativities to be like specks of dust in our eyes.
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Journal, 2019 The Four Immeasurables Leave Nothing Untouched
All that’s visible springs from causes deep inside you
While walking, sitting, lying down
The body itself is the complete truth
Dogen
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.
Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
Tao Te Ching, 64
What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away. And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
Eugene Gendlin, Focusing, quoted in the new book by the excellent Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
Monks, eight worldly winds spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight winds: Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.
The Buddha, Lokavipatti Sutta
A falling leaf does not hate the wind
Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976, Chinese philosopher, linguist, novelist, and translator.
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