The blessings and the vastness

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I know from personal experience how strong the habitual mind is. The discursive mind, the busy, worried, caught-up, spaced-out mind, is powerful. That’s all the more reason to d the most important thing – to realize what a strong opportunity every day is, and how easy it is to waste it. If you don’t allow your mind to open and to connect with where you are. with the immediacy of your experience, you could easily become completely submerged….you get so completely caught up in the content of your life, the minutiae that make up a day, so self-absorbed in the big project you have to do, that the blessings, the magic, the stillness and the vastness escape you. 

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Exquisitely singular

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Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute.

Don’t reject them, let them come through when they’re ready, don’t think you can plan it all out.

This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again.

It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.

Naomi Shihab Nye, I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven

Supports all around

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Just when the worst bears down

You find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon

And outside a bird says “hi”

Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;

It is coming your way. It touches your shoe.

William Stafford, It’s all Right

Right here

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When you encounter things, you should know that right there the true teaching reveals itself.

You should know that place

Suzuki Roshi

Sunday quote: Surprise

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Gratitude is a real practice, as valid as yoga, or Zen meditation or Sufi dancing – if you take it seriously.

Gratitude starts with surprise. We deprive ourselves so much by not allowing ourselves to be surprised.

David Steindl-Rast

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Forest bathing

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We all know intuitively that going outside is good for us, and a growing foundation of science and neuroscience underlies the health benefits of being outdoors. In the 1980s, the secretary of Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries coined the term shinrin-yoku for making contact with and being affected—both physically and mentally—by the atmosphere of the forest. Shinrin-yoku translates in the West as “forest bathing” and is part of what I call the green cure: connecting with the natural world to help us thrive physically, cognitively, emotionally, and even spiritually.

You need only the most basic equipment: Leave your camera, your journal, and your guidebooks behind, and turn off your mobile devices. Forest bathing is about being, not analyzing.

Find some trees….Find somewhere to sit or lean, where you can be still for 10-20 minutes or more without being in the way of bicycle traffic, ants, or poison ivy.

Now do just that — be still.  Be aware of your breath, but don’t force it. Let the experience come to you, don’t analyze. See what you see, hear what you hear, smell what you smell, feel what you feel. Light through the leaves…skittering or birdsong…blossom or decay…calm or grounded…

Alice Peck, Let Nature Heal You, in Mindful