Tag: Awareness

Forget climbing

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A woman said to Suzuki Roshi that she found it difficult to mix practice with the demands of being a householder. “I feel that I am trying to climb a ladder, but for every step upwards I slip back two steps” “Forget the ladder” Suzuki Roshi told her. “When you are awake everything is right here on the ground” He explained how the desire to gain anything means you miss the reality of the present. “When you realize the truth that everything changes, and find your composure in it, there you find yourself…” The goal is to let go of anything special and meet each moment with beginners mind.

Jack Kornfield, “Enlightenment” in Inquiring Mind

Sunday Quote: Nowhere to go, nothing to achieve

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If you cannot find the truth right where you are,

where else do you expect to find it?

Dogen

An underlying calm

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Meditation is not about trying to create something special, to get to a special state; meditation is more about uncovering what has always been and always is here. One is simply trying to bring external conditions into alignment with that fundamental reality of human nature.

Ajahn Amaro, Finding the Missing Peace

It becomes clear slowly

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I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking….

And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.

I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through
all the traffic, the ambition.

Mary Oliver, At the River Clarion

Keeping a dimension of unknown

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A sense of Mystery can take us beyond disappointment and judgment to a place of expectancy. It opens in us an attitude of listening and respect. If everyone has in them the dimension of the unknown, possibility is present at all times. . . . Knowing this enables us to listen to life from the place in us that is Mystery also. Mystery requires that we relinquish an endless search for answers and become willing to not understand. . . . Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years, I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.

Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

Present for a new day

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This morning, at dawn, I understand that this new day does not resemble any other, that this morning is unique.  We often think that we store away certain mornings for later.  But it is impossible.  Each morning is special, unique.  My friend, how do you find this morning?  It is here for the first time in our lives?  Is it the repetition of a past morning?  My friend, when we are not present, mornings repeat themselves.  If we are present in front of life, each morning is a new space, a new time. 
Thich Nhat Hanh, in Call Me By My True Names