Passing through walls hurts human beings, they get sick from
it, but we have no choice.
It’s all one world. Now to the walls.
The walls are a part of you.
One either knows that, or one doesn’t; but it’s the same for
everyone except for small children. There aren’t any walls for them.
The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
and whispers: “I am not empty, I am open.
Tomas Tranströmer, Vermeer
Because they challenge us to the limits of our open-mindedness, difficult relationships are in many ways the most valuable for practice. The people who irritate us are the ones who inevitably blow our cover. Through them we might come to see our defenses very clearly. Shantideva explained it like this: If we wish to practice generosity and a beggar arrives, that’s good news. The beggar gives us an opportunity to learn how to give. Likewise, if we want to practice patience and unconditional loving-kindness and an enemy arrives, we are in luck. Without the ones who irritate us, we never have a chance to practice.
Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You
In order to have peace and joy, you must succeed in having peace within each of your steps. Your steps are the most important thing. They decide everything. But often in our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears. Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so our steps lose their natural easiness. Our earth is truly beautiful. There is so much graceful, natural scenery along paths and roads around the earth! They are all available to us, yet we cannot enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not at ease.
Thich Nhat Hahn
There are years that ask questions and years that answer
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God
Joy is exactly what’s happening minus our opinion of it.
Charlotte Joko Beck.
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring
A nice reminder here from Joseph Goldstein as to how the mind continually falls into the trap of raising expectations about future events, even though it sees that not all events in the past lived up to their hype. Wisdom lies in a balanced understanding of the true nature of things. Practice consists of staying in the now and letting things unfold without an agenda, staying open to how they actually are when they arrive in the present.
When we look back at our experience, we can see so clearly its ephemeral, dreamlike nature. Yet when we look ahead, when we look to the future, somehow (and this is the great enchantment) we get dazzled by all the possibilities that are there waiting for us as if the next event in our lives, the next situation, the next project, the next relationship, the next meal, even on meditation the next breath … we live our lives in anticipation of the next hit of experience as if the one that’s coming will finally do it for us. What’s so strange is that nothing up ’til now has brought that sense of real completion or fulfillment. So why are we so seduced into thinking that the next one will? This is a very strange phenomena.
Joseph Goldstein
