As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be,
You cannot see how it is
Ram Dass
It Should be
Joy
84,000 delusions
84,000 lights
84,000 joys abounding
Saichi Asahara, Jōdo Shinshū [True Pure Land Buddhism] poet, writer and sandal maker
In Buddhism it is said that there are 84,000 doors to Enlightenment
Sunday Quote: A light in the heart
No striving, no grasping at this or that, no entertaining any self-involved stories whatsoever.
Instead, attention pivots toward a light in the heart in which the ‘field of boundless emptiness’ is revealed.
All questions and doubts are put to rest.
Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091–1157, Chinese Chan Buddhist monk
Fall and rise
We’re not trying to stand in the middle of something, and know that the situation will pass.
We’re trying to stand in the middle of it and know that our overwhelm will pass.
That’s what’s passing. The situation itself may take a long while, and we have to do some effort in it. But what we’re aimed at, as practitioners, is to first let our overwhelm pass, let it be, let it rise and fall as all emotions do.
Tuere Sala
This practice
If you can’t sleep, get up. Make tea. Pray. If you can’t pray, pray anyway. Light a candle. Kneel. Watch. If you can’t watch, watch anyway.
There are hares looking for food. And there are sleeping robins beyond the dark window. There are burrowing things burrowing.
There is this posture, this story, this practice, that – even if nothing else holds you – holds you.
Pádraig Ó Tuama, Irish poet, creater of the beautiful podcast Poetry Unbound
Trust in what is difficult
It is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
