It flows on without stopping
Through thousands and thousands of turns.
“A moment before thought” is
Already wrong thinking.
To try to say anything more
Is embarrassing.
T’aego, Korean Zen master, 1301–1382
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Tag: Awareness
Pushing
There is a quick-fix mentality in Ireland and elsewhere today, which even apply to ways of working on ourselves – like the latest surefire diet, or radio interviews which imply that an instant mindfulness session will cure all ills. At the heart of these is a vision of quick change which encourages us to strive and push to achieve. We think that we need to control everything and impose ourselves upon it. While useful at times, this sometimes can mean that we are never happy with anything, including ourselves. Meditation practice encourages a different way, of letting things come to us instead. We sit in meditation and create space, allowing things unfold in their own time.
To push your self forward to experience and illuminate the millions of things, that is delusion.
When the millions of things come forward and illuminate themselves, that is freedom
Dogen, GenjoKoan
Balance
Seek patience
and passion
in equal amounts.
Patience alone
will not build the temple.
Passion alone
will destroy its walls.
Maya Angelou
photo Golden Temple, Kyoto by Ellywa
Sunday Quote: Seeing
It is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain
Mary Oliver, Daisies
Really get a sense of
In the ongoing truthfulness of our practice, it is really important to sift through all the static and white noise that the emotions and psychologies are setting up — to really see, to get a handle on, what intention feels like in our nervous system. And the quality of attention — how big, or narrow, or tight we feel, how bound we feel when we’re really occupied with a whole series of thoughts, how our attention bunches up — we start to sense this is, in the bodily sense; we get a real sense of the feel of this and the release of that. This is what we practice. This is the dissolving.
Ajahn Sucitto, What if I get it wrong?
Always starting over
There is only one day left,
always starting over:
it is given to us at dawn
and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre
