Our true nature

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The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year

In dark times  when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

Dark and bright

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We are the driven ones.
But the pressing on of time,
Takes us as small things
Into the everlasting.

All this rushing
Will soon be over;
For it is in lingering
That we receive insight.

All is in repose:
the darkness and the brightness,
the flower and the book.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus First Part, 22

Sunday Quote: A dark place

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Coming to the mid point of winter, short dark days

Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
If you are ….in a dark place, you still have what really counts.
If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.

John Tarrant, It Would Be a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis

A momentary crossing

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A full moon tonight, the last of the year, the Cold Moon, as we approach the shortest day of the year.

There are times when,
If the circumstances are just right,
Like a full moon,
A light rain,
Twilight, or fog,
There is a momentary crossing
From time to timelessness,
Form to Formless,
Blood and bone to earth and rock,
Past and future to present.
Where the atoms, the molecules of me
Forget to stop
From fusing into the earth and other places
Where I am not lost, but found,
Not part, but whole,
No longer longing for myself.

Parker Palmer

Bareness of being

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So often we run from feeling and yet it is only through feeling that we can know the depth of life. Only through feeling can we hold the smallest shell or bone and feel the tug of the Universe. Such raw being aches, for, as the Buddhists say, the bareness of being here is so full. …With no way to that bareness but through feeling and the listening that feeling opens….. Through this bareness of being, we refresh our openness and enliven our innate connection to the one living sense. Through our unblocked, sincere response to life, we can tune our inner person with the great mysteries.

Mark Nepo

The art of stopping

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There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” and the first man replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!” This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. We are at war within ourselves…We have to learn the art of stopping – stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us.

Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching