where you are

The human mind has absolute freedom as its true nature

There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and achieved this realisation.

Do not doubt this possibility because of the simplicity of the method.

If you cannot find the truth where you are, where do you think you will find it?

Dogen

Sunday Quote: imposing your preferences

Allow life to unfold without trying to force it into the shape imagined by the mind.

Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life

without forcing them to happen

and without rejecting the ones that don’t fit your idea of

what “should” be happening.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you Are

Among the trees

I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Wendell Berry I Go Among Trees and Sit Still

Need less…

If you feel that your dreams aren’t coming true, you might think that you need to do more, or to think and strategize more.

In fact, what you might need is less – less noise coming to you from both inside and outside -so that you have the space for your heart’s truest intention to germinate and flourish

Thich Nhat Hanh, Silence

..stop trying

Enlightenment is not something you achieve.

It is the absence of something.

All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal.

Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, 1885–1973, Zen master in the Sōtō tradition, 

Step back…

If you are distressed by anything external,

the pain is not due to the thing itself,

but to your estimate of it;

and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8, §47, i