Changing and unchanging

File:Moon in dawn reflection on lake scenic.jpg

In the MBSR group last night in Moone we were talking about how each day we are confronted with new experiences and challenges – unexpected deadlines, getting a parking ticket, the wind bringing down trees. We can be faced with changing feelings and attitudes, moods and emotions. However, as we said,  it is not so much the experiences in our life that are crucial but how we relate to our experiences. Through sitting we are nourishing something that does not change – our awareness – which allows us say, as Tara Brach suggested yesterday,  “This too”:

The water in the stream may have changed many times,

but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.

Rumi

Support

Holding Hands with Elderly Patient

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some ways shameful – because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed – is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them.

Alice Walker, Letter to President Clinton

A way of seeing things today

Letting the past go

By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
But when you try and try.
The world is beyond the winning.

Lao Tzu

Sunday quote: where to place our attention

Amazon Black Friday

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

…..onto how reality is

sun through clouds

Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the earth
And there is neither increase nor decrease;
Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky.

Saraha, 8th century Buddhist teacher

…Such as the story of being separate

Women Standing in Circle

Human beings are a part of a whole, called by us “the Universe”, a part limited in time and space. We experiences ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of  consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein.