Not looking from outside

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9th century Zen master, Tozan Ryokai, attained enlightenment many times. Once when he was crossing a river he saw himself reflected in the water and composed a verse, “Don’t try to figure out who you are. If you figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself.”

Actually, you are in the river. You may say that is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warm-hearted feeling, that is you. You may think you are very warm-hearted, but when you try to understand how warm, you cannot actually measure. Yet when you see yourself with a warm feeling in the mirror or the water, that is actually you.

And whatever you do, you are there.

from the great Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen

A mind at rest

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Without a story, the fragments won’t settle.

Lia Purpura, 1964 – , American poet

Sunday Quote: Joy

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what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
 

Rumi

Blue

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We have had bright Summer weather all week here, spacious blue skies, something of a rarity in Ireland

I thank God for most this
amazing day; for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.

e. e. cummings

Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions… Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called “jai pongsai”, our natural lightness of heart.

Wise attention has a gracious witnessing quality, acknowledging each event – whether boredom or jealousy, plans or excitement, gain or loss, pleasure or pain – with a slight bow. Moment by moment we release the illusion of getting “somewhere” and rest in the timeless present, witnessing with easy awareness all that passes by. As we let go, our innate freedom and wisdom manifest. Nothing to have, nothing to be. Ajahn Chah called this “resting in the One Who Knows.”

Jack Kornfield, A Mind Like Sky Meditation

Our inner dramas

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Nasrudin was standing on the bank of a river, and watched as a dog came to drink. The dog saw its reflection in the water and immediately began barking at it. It barked until it was foaming at the mouth, and exhausted, fell into the river – whereupon it quenched its thirst, climbed out, and happily walked away.

Nasrudin said, “Seeing this, I realized I have been barking at my own reflection all my life“.

Sufi teaching story

Still we stumble

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A Full moon this evening.

A single moon
Bright and clear in an unclouded sky:
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
Have a good look:
stop the breath, peel off the skin,
and everybody ends up looking the same.
No matter how long you live,
the result is not altered.
Who will not end up as a skeleton?

Cast off the notion that “I
exist.” …. Entrust yourself to the windblown
clouds, and do not wish to live forever

Ikkyū, 1394 – 1481, Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet, in John Stevens, Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu