We can spend a lot of time each day as if in a trance, missing each moment as we lean into the next. One way to counteract this, and enjoy your life more, is to let yourself notice the little things today with fresh eyes; simple things, like a cup of coffee, a smile from a colleague, the dew on the grass. In this way we pause and refresh the heart.
In the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
If we can be quieter, more in the moment with what is actually happening, a world of perception opens up for us based on where we are, not on where we one day hope to be. “Nobody sees a flower, really; it is so small,” said artist Georgia O’Keeffe. “We haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” If we learn to take a little more time and be more fully aware of just where we are, we might see many new flowers and have many more friends.
Sharon Salzberg, The Power of Patience
photo from catriona.net
Every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Bashô, Oku no Hosomichi (1689).
photo Graham Cole
“The Island that you cannot go beyond” is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware. [It]….is very powerful, because it points to the principle of an awareness that you can’t get beyond. It’s very simple, very direct, and you can’t conceive it. You have to trust it. You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings. The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are. We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both.
Ajahn Sumedho, A difficulty with the word nibbana
photo of full moon over the Skellig islands, off Co Kerry, by bloodybucaneer
As I was driving the other day in Kildare I noticed silhouettes of bare trees on the hill tops and it remanded me of this quote. We do not always see the full story of what is happening in our lives. We have to hold a space for not-knowing, for allowing things to develop at their own pace.
I prefer winter ……when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
Andrew Wyatt, American Painter
