All that’s visible springs from causes deep inside you
While walking, sitting, lying down
The body itself is the complete truth
Dogen
Roots
Tag: Awareness
patience without forcing
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.
Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
Tao Te Ching, 64
Sunday Quote: the winds of life
Monks, eight worldly winds spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight winds: Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.
The Buddha, Lokavipatti Sutta
A falling leaf does not hate the wind
Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976, Chinese philosopher, linguist, novelist, and translator.
to enjoy one’s life
The meaning of life is just to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Alan Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture
Hurrying
Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years.
Everyone hurries their life on
and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present.
But the one who bestows all of their time on their own needs,
who plans out every day as if it were their last,
neither longs for, nor fears, the next day.
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae [On the Shortness of Life] AD 49
Behind the flow
We all have moments of agitation in our thoughts and feelings. We tend to identify with these as us. We are also always grasping after something that we think will finally complete us. The legendary Bodhidharma points here to a fluid way of working with the mind: See it, and the self, as a process, not a solid, unchanging entity.
Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is always restless. Please give it some calm.”
To which Bodhidharma replied, “OK. Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.”
Huike said, “Although I have tried to find it, I cannot hold it fast”
Bodhidharma then said, “See, there, I have just stilled your mind.”
Case 41 in the Gateless Gate, “Pacifying the Mind”.
Mindfulbalance 