God is a circle whose center is everywhere
and circumference nowhere.
Voltaire
photo: carved spiral design on passage tomb entrance at Newgrange, Co Meath, Ireland
Tag: Awareness
Always looking elsewhere
There is no greater mystery than this,
that we keep seeking reality
though in fact we are reality
Ramana Maharsi
photo epsos.de
Recognizing your experience
Here’s a definition of mindfulness: it’s a strengthening of your concentration so that you can be more precise and clear in recognizing your experience. It’s also a strengthening of your equanimity — your ability to be relaxed and open in the face of your experience. The concentration part of mindfulness is a little like drinking a cup of coffee; it kind of wakes you up. It’s like the straight spine of arousal or awareness. The equanimity part is like the relaxed limbs of the body. The spine is straight, and the limbs are relaxed. This relaxation part is a receptivity and acceptance to things as they are. It’s a kind of “friendly audience” to your own experience; a sort of “Hello. Wow! OK.” attitude — a gentle, matter-of-fact awareness of your experience, rather than a reactive pulling back. All mindfulness practices cultivate both of those, the concentration and the equanimity, so that you can be clearer, more precise and more relaxed in the face of whatever is happening to you —whether it’s loud noises coming in from a jackhammer running in the next building, or a pain in your knee, or your emotions about your spouse.
Polly Young-Eisendrath
Simplify the production
Mindfulness, seeing clearly, means awakening to the happiness of the uncomplicated moment. We complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production.
It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be.
Sylvia Boorstein
Not being fixed
When one door of happiness closes, another opens,
but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
Noticing simple things
By taking a moment to pay attention to something as simple as turning on the water tap, we give ourselves the opportunity to be aware of how things in our lives come, go, and transform, which makes us less likely to take them for granted. Instead, we can, for even a moment, be awake to the transitory blessing they are. And, certainly, we can carry this habit out into the larger world, applying it to whatever we find ourselves doing or encountering.
Turning on the Water: Water flows from high mountain sources.
Water runs deep in the Earth.
Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life.
Thich Nhat Hanh
photo thegreenj
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