The open space

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Yesterday was a lovely Spring morning and I was driving through the beautiful countryside of Co Wicklow to start an MBSR Course in Arklow. The mountains in the distance, the lambs playing in the fields, and the brightness of the light made it easy to feel a mind that was spacious. When that happens I find that I do not struggle with life as much. And our meditation practice is simply that – letting the mind settle, become more spacious and resting in that.

There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we’re stuck in our thoughts. We’re out of touch with the open space that is always right here.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special

photo j h jansens

Where else

Primula_aka

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are,

where else do you expect to find it?

Dōgen

Blackbird singing

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Some events, like hearing a bird singing early this morning, make it easy to be fully present. We are not remembering another bird, another moment.

I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of inflections
or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

photo m.betley

How it is right now

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What does it mean to see each other exactly as we are? Past memories about ourselves and each other are not how we are right now. Memory is an incomplete and inaccurate recording of the past. Now is something entirely different. Quietly looking and listening now is not memory. It is an entirely different mode of being, It is a cleansing of perception.

Toni Packer, The Work of this Moment

Sunday Quote: Quiet in heart

We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye, clear.

What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

photo rspb

Noticing thinking

busy44

It flows on without stopping
Through thousands and thousands of turns.

“A moment before thought” is
Already wrong thinking.

To try to say anything more
Is embarrassing.

T’aego, Korean Zen master, 1301–1382

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