We can only be where we are: Right here, right now.
Zen practice is to accept that place with calm.
We cannot always be master of the situation, but we can always be master of ourselves.
Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7: All Zen All the TIme
Tag: Acceptance
Why we are always restless
The creator of the universe loves circles:
time and space are circles, the day is a circle, the year is a circle, the earth is a circle.
But when creating and fashioning the human heart, the creator only created a half-circle, so that there is something ontologically unfinished in human nature.
John O’Donohue
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,
we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished.
Karl Rahner, sj., Catholic theologian
Embrace
Today try taking some time to explore the possibility of sitting with yourself as if you were your own best friend.
Dwelling in the awareness of the breath, allowing thoughts and feelings to come and go, experiment with the possibility of embracing yourself as you would embrace another person who is dear to you and needs to be held.
Saki Santorelli
We are weak
Weakness is at the heart of each one of us. Weakness becomes a place of chaos and confusion, if in our weakness we are not wanted; it becomes a place of peace and joy, if we are accepted, listened to, appreciated and loved.
Some people are infuriated by weakness. Weakness awakens hardness and anger in them. But to deny weakness as part of life is to deny death, because weakness speaks to us of the ultimate powerlessness, of death itself. To be small, to be sick, to be dying, are stages of powerless, they appear to us to be anti-life and so we deny them.
If we deny our weakness and the reality of death, if we want to be powerful and strong always, we deny part of our being, we live an illusion. To be human is to accept who we are, this mixture of strength and weakness.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human
Allow them to come, allow them to go
If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go.
Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
I wish it was different
Unusually long and hot weather spell in Ireland these last weeks, after our harshest winter in decades, The land is getting quite parched and water restrictions are in place. So we, who normally complain about the lack of sun in the Summer, now complain of its presence. Another example of the either/or dynamic which pops up so frequently in our thoughts and of the constant daydreaming that things should be different. This famous koan from the 9th Century Chan Master Dongshan challenges us to be completely with whatever is happening, without always placing it beside an alternative:
A monk asked Dongshan, “When the cold visits us, how can we avoid it?”
Dongshan said, “Why not go where there is no cold?”
The monk asked, “Where is the place without cold?”
Dongshan said, “When it is cold, let the cold kill you. When it is hot, let the heat kill you.”
Blue Cliff Record Case 43: Dongshan’s Cold and Heat
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