Be still

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Why scurry about looking for the truth?
It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose.
Can you be still and see it in the mountain? the pine tree? yourself?
Don’t imagine that you’ll discover it by accumulating more knowledge.
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge.

The wise person dines on something more subtle:
He finds this subtle truth inside his own self,
and becomes completely content.
So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?
The foolish are always making impulsive moves,
but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle.
They see that something perfect exists before any move is made.

Remain quiet. Discover the harmony in your own being.
Embrace it.
If you can do this, you will gain everything,
and the world will become healthy again.
If you can’t, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

The Huahujing, traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, translation Brian Walker 

As things are

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Tathata, which means “suchness” or “like-this-ness,” is used in Buddhism to mean “reality,” or the way things really are. This poem by Dongshan (807-869) reminds us to work with things as they are in our lives, rather than our thoughts as to how our life should be.

The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and ancestors.
Now you have it, so keep it well.

Filling a silver bowl with snow,
hiding a heron in the moonlight —
Taken as similar they’re not the same;
when you mix them, you know where they are.

Sunday Quote: Not demanding more

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Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are.

Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 5

It starts with you

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Only one of our relationships is truly lifelong, from our first breath to our last. The one we have with ourselves. Imagine if it was characterised by compassion and warmth. By an ability to forgive, to forget our little missteps. Imagine if we could look at ourselves with gentle, kind eyes and view our faults with a sense of humour. Imagine if we could give ourselves the same loving care we give our children or other people we love without reservation. It would do us a world of good. And the divine emotions in us would thrive.

from this nice, heartfelt book which I am just finishing – Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.

You are the medicine

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Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon.
With the sound of the river and the waterfall.
With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.

Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain .Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.

Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead. Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.

Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.

María Sabina Magdalena García, 1894 – 1985, Mexican shaman and poet.

Not the conditions

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The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied. If you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless, you bring awareness to the feeling and there is suddenly some space and stillness around it. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not. You discover that a “bored person” is not who you are.

Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours”, not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. “I am bored.” Who knows this? “I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this? You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.

Eckhart Tolle