Tag: Awareness

Things arise and pass away

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The Buddha takes something like suffering, (dukkha), and says it’s a Noble Truth. This was an astounding thing to be doing because humans think that suffering is a nasty fact of life, and we want to get rid of it. So we’re always running around trying to find happiness and security in the things that are always changing, and of course we end up suffering more. So just changing the attitude towards suffering is what the Buddha did. Not to get rid of it or blame it on anybody, but to recognize it. Then you’re no longer looking at suffering from aversion and wanting to get rid of it or blaming it on somebody else, but seeing what it actually is in the present moment: formations arising and ceasing. That’s brilliant!

Ajahn Sumedho, Remembering Tan Ajahn Buddhadāsa

Change

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Today is the Autumn Equinox, which is celebrated as a public holiday in Japan.

Imitate the trees.

Learn to lose in order to recover,

and remember that nothing stays the same for long,

not even pain.

May Sarton, 1912 –  1995, Belgian-American poet and novelist.

Sunday Quote: Circumstances

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May whatever circumstances that arise serve the awakening of compassion.

Buddhist Aspiration quoted by Tara Brach, Radical Compassion in Challenging Times

A choice for today

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In Auschwitz, we never knew from one moment to another what was going to happen….I couldn’t fight or flee, but I learned how to stay in a situation and make the best of what is. I still had choices. So, when we were stripped and shorn of our hair, Magda asked me, ‘How do I look?’ She looked like a mangy dog, but I told her: ‘Your eyes are so beautiful. I never noticed when you had all that hair.’ Every day, we could choose to pay attention to what we’d lost or what we still had.

Edith Eger , 1927 –  Holocaust Survivor, The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Not turning away

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This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been.  We are already as much as we will ever be. But the question is – do we know it? …….And so one of the most important steps is to come into agreement with your life so that you’re not turning away from yourself in any way. And the amazing thing is that when we are no longer turning away from ourselves, we find a great amount of energy, a great capacity for clarity and wisdom, and we start to see everything we need to see.

Adyashanti, The End of Your World

Devastation….

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Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

Maya Angelou