Our minds are like crows.
They pick up everything that glitters,
no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them
Thomas Merton
Tag: Awareness
Start to grow up
We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up.
Ani Tenzin Palmo
Clear seeing of whatever is present
You shouldn’t chase after the past, or place expectations on the future.
What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see, right there, right there.
Not taken in; unshaken.
That’s how you develop the heart.
The Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta
Fragile
Yesterday I got the news that the mother of a good friend had passed away, suddenly, without warning. I had a lovely meal with her and her husband just last Thursday in Geneva, having flown in earlier that day from Ireland. We had spoken of the launch of her website and plans for the future, and we had a lovely, carefree evening. Then yesterday this news came, reminding me of the fragile nature of life, and how our plans can be interrupted. As I drove home five swans flew low over the road. I thought of the poem by Yeats, The Wild Swans of Coole. In Celtic myths these beautiful birds frequently symbolized the inner life or the soul. They were especially associated with the big feast of Samhain, the start of November. In the poem they fly away dramatically, embodying some of the elements of this life – touched by its beauty we wish to grasp it, to live it fully, but it also moves on, with aspects out of reach. We awake some days to find that all has changed.
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
photo dirk ingo franke
Life as teacher
Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
artwork: yuma
Non-distancing awareness
Zen is the taste of your own tongue in your own mouth. It’s a way to find something very simple that’s already present within you — a subtler, sharper, non-distanced, and non-distancing awareness.
Everything else emerges from this intimacy with your own life, this opening into attention. We become the instruments of our lives and become part of the orchestra of the larger existences that our lives in turn are part of.
Jane Hirshfield, American Poet, 1953 –
Mindfulbalance 