Tag: Awareness

of ordinary things

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It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Pat Schneider, 1934 – 2020, American writer, poet, writing teacher and editor

Just enjoy

Karl Duffy5 Comments

When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy. Latch on to the passing minute. Shut off the workings of memory and hope… Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half. Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed.

Jacques Lusseyran, 1924–1971, And there was Light.

Lusseyran became blind after a childhood accident, worked with the Resistance in World War Two and survived the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald.

Thanks to Maura Parolini for the quote suggestion. It is taken from the beautiful site The Marginalian

You might actually be quite free

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Buddha nature refers to our deeper inner wholeness

Your buddha nature is always with you. It’s just that you haven’t noticed yet….

Thinking it’s not here is one of the things that keeps you from noticing it.

You might not be deluded in this moment at all. You might be quite free. You might feel the joy that’s the natural joy of being human.

John Tarrant

Passing by

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Not everyone is able to walk, but most people can, which makes walking one of the most easily available spiritual practices of all. All it takes is the decision to walk with some awareness, both of who you are and what you are doing. Where you are going is not as important, however counterintuitive that may seem. To detach the walking from the destination is in fact one of the best ways to recognize the altars you are passing right by all the time. Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are. When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, “Here, I guess, since this is where I am.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World,

Hold it lightly

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The water that you see in the waterfall

has already rushed to the great ocean.

Life is like the rushing water of the waterfall. From a distance it appears solid, but when you look closely, you see that it is in constant movement, continuous change, rushing like a cascade of long white rope

Tangen Harada Roshi, Throw yourself into the House of Buddha

All around, sometimes hidden

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All we need is to experience what we already possess

Thomas Merton