Tag: Awareness

Hold what is happening lightly

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Just stay at the center of the circle,

and let all things take their course. 

Tao Te Ching

We rush through the day, we miss so much

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Another Autumn Saturday, two more poets.

Very foggy all day yesterday, a good metaphor for how we live our lives sometimes. 

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

Denise Levertov, Witness. 

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished.

Mary Oliver, Sometimes      

One hour at a time

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Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

Mary Oliver, Snow Geese

Accept yourself

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The paradox of our practice is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave ourselves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another

Barry Magid, Leave yourself Alone

Time to take your turn

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Giving up some conditioned behaviour patterns is also good:

You didn’t come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren’t born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose — paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.

I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn’t bother anyone.

Now I take my turn, as a radical act.

Anne Lamott, Stitches

Sunday Quote: The start of Autumn

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Don’t prolong the past,

don’t invite the future,

don’t be deceived by appearances,

just dwell in present awareness.

Patrul Rinpoche