The world is a closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. … Every separation is a link.
Simone Weil
Very easy to say but which in reality requires ongoing practice to achieve. However, these are as succinct a guide to meditation as you will ever find. Because of the hectic pace of life in the world today and here in Ireland, this practice is no longer a luxury, but is a necessity for overall health:
Let the body assume its natural ease.
Let the mind assume its natural ease.
Now, just stay alert to anything that arises to disturb that natural ease.
Ajahn Amaro
It doesn’t actually take any more time to say good-bye or hug you know, your children or whatever it is in the morning when you’re on your way to work. But the mind says, ‘I don’t have any time for this.’ But actually that’s all you have time for, is this because there’s nothing else than this…So when your four year-old can’t decide which dress she wants to wear, that’s not a problem for you, unless you make it a problem for you. That’s just the way four year-olds are. And the more we can sort of learn these lessons the more we will not be in some sense running towards our death, but in a sense opening to our lives.
Jon Kabat Zinn
photo D Sharon Pruitt
In a sense, our path is no path. The object is not to get somewhere. There is no great mystery, really; what we need to do is straightforward. I don’t mean that it is easy; the “path” of practice is not a smooth road. It is littered with sharp rocks that can make us stumble or that can cut right through our shoes. Life itself is hazardous. The path of life seems to be mostly difficulties, things that give trouble. Yet the longer we practice, the more we begin to understand that those sharp rocks on the road are in fact like precious jewels; they help us to prepare the proper condition for our lives…There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn’t know before: that there are no sharp rocks — the road is covered with diamonds.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special
photo of Slieve Donard, County Down, Ireland by Dean Molyneaux
Our way is to practice one step at a time,
one breath at a time,
with no gaining idea.
Shunryu Suzuki
Every day of your life, every morning of your life, you could ask yourself, “As I go into this day, what is the most important thing? What is the best use of this day?” At my age, it’s kind of scary when I go to bed at night and I look back at the day, and it seems like it passed in the snap of a finger. That was a whole day? What did I do with it? Did I move any closer to being more compassionate, loving, and caring — to being fully awake? Is my mind more open? What did I actually do? I feel how little time there is and how important it is how we spend our time. What is the best use of each day of our lives? In one very short day, each of us could become more sane, more compassionate, more tender, more in touch with the dream-like quality of reality. Or we could bury all these qualities and get more in touch with solid mind, retreating more into our own cocoon.
Pema Chodron, Waking up to your World
photo of sun rising over the Corrib river, Galway, by tom murphy
Mindfulbalance 