There is a phrase which is associated with the Japanese tea ceremony – Ichigo ichie – which means something like “one time, one encounter.” . It is a nice motto to take for today. It reminds us to treasure every moment, because each moment and each meeting will happen only once and never recur again. So whether having a simple cup of tea or coffee, or meeting someone we know well, or going a familiar way, let us try to keep the phrase in mind. We will not pass this way again.
In Italy, today – the Monday after Easter Sunday – is known as La Pasquetta (“Little Easter”) or Lunedì dell’Angelo (“The Monday of the Angel”). Ir is a day for relaxing outside, for going for a walk and having a picnic. It probably has it roots in ancient Spring festivals, when people would gather outdoors to celebrate. It was a day when a journey, a walk, or even a drive in the car had to be made. The religious meaning given to it, at least as it was explained to me, was to remember the journey made by Jesus’ two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter Day.
These two disciples set out on Sunday for the village of Emmaus, a walk of a few days. As they were going along, Jesus joined them. They did not recognize him. They were replaying the events of the past – the days of the Crucifixion – and were worrying about what was to happen to them. Their concerns and chatter, their fear-driven desire to run away, did not allow them recognize that God was actually walking with them. In this way, they are just like us, caught in worries about the past, or running away or basing our view of the future on fears. Like us, we often fail to recognize the richness of our life lies in the present moment, when all we can experience is right with us. Often, to be fully alive, all we have to do is see what is being offered to us, right in this moment, rather than thinking our joy lies somewhere else, sometime else. It is sad if we are so focused on getting to a destination, we do not notice what is right beside us now.
The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Understanding Our Mind
The present moment, like the spotted owl or the sea turtle, has become an endangered species. Yet more and more I find that dwelling in the present moment, in the face of everything that would call us out of it, is our highest spiritual discipline. More boldly, I would say that our very presentness is our salvation; the present moment, entered into fully, is our gateway to eternal life.
Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall
Contemplation is related to art, to worship, to charity: all these reach out by intuition and self-dedication into the realms that transcend the material conduct of everyday life. Or rather, in the midst of ordinary life itself they seek and find a new and transcendent meaning. And by this meaning, they transfigure the whole of life.
Thomas Merton.
If you start looking at life with joy,
sadness starts disappearing.
You cannot have heaven and hell together,
you can have only one.
It is your choice.
Osho
Life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.
David Whyte
As this morning’s quote reminds us, in meditation we practice giving bare attention to the breath, just noticing, without adding anything. We try to extend this to life, slowing down the continual pre-judgments or commentary in our heads. However, it is not easy just to let things be, without the immediate adding of a word or evaluation. The mind quickly adds words, positive ones like, “This is good, I like it here”, or more likely spontaneous negative ones, such as ” This is not for me, This is boring” or “She always says the same things”. Fixed ideas mean that we lose curiosity about what is unfolding each day. So our practice includes getting the balance between knowing and not-knowing, trying to know fully what is actually happening and losing some of our stories about people or about how our life is going.
[In the beginning,] … the photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer — a scribe, not a poet. But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same things, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective image yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.
Susan Sontag, On Photography
Mindfulbalance 