Dwelling in preconceived notions

Dwelling nowhere, the mind comes forth.
The Diamond Sutra

Working with this koan alters how I might meet the world in two ways. In one twist, the koan takes my attention to my thoughts and opinions about what I come into contact with each moment – beyond the confines of what I can conceive of or label. The fact that I take mundane shrubs, trees, stray cats, and rain squalls for granted or even consider them to be inconvenient nuisances at times is something the koan quietly forces me to examine more closely. What would life be like without these images, moments, and experiences? Do I create an inner world in which only some of what is present makes it through my ingrained mental filters? If yes, what would happen if I deconstructed these borders and removed them? Maybe everything that graces my life has a subtle extraordinariness and that allowing this connection to blossom on its own is a practice that takes place naturally when I just begin to notice.

Don Dianda, author of See for Your Self: Zen Mindfulness for the Next Generation

Let nothing disturb you

From the beginning

the flying birds have left

no footprints on the blue sky

Musō Soseki, 1275 – 1351, Zen Buddhist Monk, calligraphy artist and garden designer,  1275 – 1351

Sunday Quote: Just notice

The first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of a New Year in the Christian tradition.

Abundance is not something we acquire.

It is something we tune into.

Wayne Dyer

Hoping for something else

 

Something to remember each day as we start the last month of the year

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life

as in hoping to have another life

and in turning away from the implacable grandeur of this one.

[Car s’il y a un péché contre la vie, ce n’est peut-être pas tant d’en désespérer que d’espérer une autre vie, et se dérober à l’implacable grandeur de celle]

Albert Camus, Nuptials

Holding both

Though the years are sad,

the days have a way of being jubilant

Edith Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance 

so that it notices…

We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek