If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound,
productive by turning all life’s leisure into work,
and real by turning all our being into doing,
we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.
Thomas Merton, The Silent Life
Avoidance of discomfort is one of the most powerful drives in us, yet much of its power derives from the belief – the false belief – that we can’t be happy if we’re uncomfortable. One of the great benefits of practice is learning that this belief is not, in fact, an unalterable truth.
Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart
Beannachtai na Féile Padraig oraibh go léir!
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day (literally “The Blessings of St Patrick’s Day be with you all”)
The word “blessing” is related in English to the word “blood.” Blessing is like the spiritual bloodstream that flows through the universe. When we bless something we are returning what we have received to its source. We know we receive life and breath from a source which is beyond us. We haven’t bought it or earned it. We are just put here and life comes to us from some mysterious source, and we can give it back. That is like the blood coming from the heart and going back to the heart. That blood keeps on flowing and if we tune in to the bloodstream of blessing the world comes alive. The same thing happens if we cut off the bloodstream or drain the sap from a tree; life withers.
The gifts or blessings of life are always there but if we are not aware of them, they don’t do much for us. That is where gratefulness comes in. Gratefulness makes us aware of the gift and makes us happy. As long as we take things for granted they don’t make us happy. Gratefulness is the key to happiness.
David Steindl-Rast.
By pausing and accepting our experience, we free ourselves to respond to our circumstances in ways that bring genuine peace and happiness. In a pause, we simply discontinue whatever we are doing. We become wholly present, attentive and, often, physically still. Try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing “no thing,” and simply notice what you experience.
Taking our hands off the controls and pausing lets us clearly see the wants and fears that drive us. We become conscious of how the feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning into the future. We can continue our futile attempt to manage our experience, or we can meet our vulnerability with the wisdom of what I call “radical acceptance.”
Tara Brach
photo greymalkn
The reason why men are so anxious to see themselves,
instead of being content to be themselves,
is that they do not really believe in their own existence.
Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life
photo 4028mdk09
Your body is your first home:
“Breathing in, I arrive in my body.
Breathing out, I am home.”
Thich Nhat Hahn
