The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton
photo bea represa
Tag: Awareness
…and not recognizing
An ancient tale tells how Karamita met the Buddha but did not recognize him. He asked the “stranger” to explain the Buddha’s teachings to him, but did not like them. He then asked him if he had actually ever heard these ideas directly from the Buddha’s lips himself, to which the Buddha with a smile, answered no. Ajahn Amaro comments on this episode:
Ajahn Chah often said that this is a position we often find ourselves in – face to face with the Buddha, sharing a room together, spending hours and hours in deep conversation and not realizing who this is. The truth of life is staring us in the face, but because we have already got programmed with something else that we want and expect, we are missing out on the lessons that life is actually able to teach us.
Ajahn Amaro, Silent Rain
photo alex proimos
Not really present…
I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have entered a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something outside the woods?
Thoreau, quoted in Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal
photo james petts
As it arises
Don’t go back over what has passed
Nor yearn for what is yet to be
What has passed has been abandoned
And the future is not yet here
The state of arising here and now
see it as it is, with insight
The Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya, 131
photo “mike” Michael L Baird
Sunday Quote: To see
What is the hardest thing of all?
What seems to be the easiest: to use your eyes to see what lies in front of you
Goethe, The Heart of Listening
What the mind is used to
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering.
Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Thich Nhat Hanh
photo D. Sharon Pruitt
