Don’t pick them up

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One day a visitor to Ajahn Chah’s monastery said to him “You have so much going on here! You have dozens of monks and nuns under your guidance and now this big building project going on. And you have these 30 to 40 branch monasteries all around.

So many things to do. So many responsibilities….

It must be really hard work for you?“

In response, Ajahn Chah pointed to some nearby stones. “Do you think they are heavy?”

And the visitor replied, “Oh yes, really heavy”

To which Ajahn Chah replied, “Not if you don’t pick them up”

As told by Ajahn Amaro, Amaravarti podcast talk, Chapter 3.20 – Practicing Dharma

Sunday quote: A holistic life

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A mind all logic is like a knife all blade,

it makes the hand bleed that uses it

Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 -1941, Indian poet, writer and philosopher

Build your own

Karl Duffy5 Comments

This is where we run into trouble in terms of being fulfilled… You have to make your own happiness, wherever you are.

Your job isn’t going to make you happy, your spouse isn’t going to make you happy, the weather isn’t going to make you happy… You have to decide what you want, and you have to find that way of doing it, whether or not the outside circumstances are going to participate in your success… You have to be able to create your own happiness, period.

Jonathan Fields, American author, in interview with Debbie Millman on the GoodLIfe Project

Big Mind

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From the great Suzuki Roshi. A lot to ponder here but I do like the idea of seeing all that happens as an unfolding of big mind:

Because we enjoy all aspects of life as an unfolding of big mind,

we do not care for any excessive joy.

So we have imperturbable composure.

Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 

Being with what is

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At any moment, whatever we are experiencing, only one of two things is ever happening: either we are being with what is, or else we are resisting what is.

Being with what is means letting ourselves have and feel our experience, just as it is right now. …

This is where genuine creativity, health, and communication, as well as spiritual power, arise from.

John Welwood

Finally, instructions for life

Karl Duffy8 Comments

We waste a lot of time seeking someone to tell us what life will be like once we live it. We drain ourselves of inner fortitude by asking others to map our way.

At the end of all this stalling, though, we each have to venture out and simply see what happens. 

The instructions are in the living,

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening