However great our conceptual knowledge and understanding might be,
in the face of real experience,
concepts are like flakes of snow fallen on a burning fire.
Zenkei Shibayama, 1894 – 1974, Japanese Rinzai Zen priest, head Roshi of Nanzenji Zen Monastery in Kyoto
The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year
In dark times when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind. This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight
We are the driven ones.
But the pressing on of time,
Takes us as small things
Into the everlasting.
All this rushing
Will soon be over;
For it is in lingering
That we receive insight.
All is in repose:
the darkness and the brightness,
the flower and the book.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus First Part, 22
So often we run from feeling and yet it is only through feeling that we can know the depth of life. Only through feeling can we hold the smallest shell or bone and feel the tug of the Universe. Such raw being aches, for, as the Buddhists say, the bareness of being here is so full. …With no way to that bareness but through feeling and the listening that feeling opens….. Through this bareness of being, we refresh our openness and enliven our innate connection to the one living sense. Through our unblocked, sincere response to life, we can tune our inner person with the great mysteries.
Mark Nepo
Craving leads to suffering whenever we fail to see that what we crave won’t really provide us with the kind of lasting satisfaction or happiness that we are seeking. The nature of craving is not to be satisfied. It is about lack. When we get stuck in this place of lacking something that we believe will bring us happiness, then we can really suffer.
Walt Opie
Qualities to keep the heart open: Be as patient as the moss and as vulnerable as the oaks.
Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Mary Oliver, Landscape (extract)
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