Simply be with what’s here.
Shinzan Roshi, my teacher constantly uses the Japanese term “nari kiru” to express what we do here. “Nari” means literally “become” and “kiru” means “totally” or “completely”. So once you find tension or stress, don’t separate yourself from it; quite the opposite, be with it, become it. In that moment there is no gap between you and the sensation.
Julian Daizan Skinner and Sarah Bladen, Practical Zen for Health, Wealth and Mindfulness
You can manage your mind in three primary ways:
Let be
Let go
Let in
Rick Hanson
After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spent nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic , in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that “Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”
Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness
Written during the COVID pandemic but can apply to all setbacks and seasons in our lives.
There is a giveaway in all of the apocalyptic sections of the three Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew 24:8, hidden there in the middle of the wars and earthquakes it says, “All this is only the beginning of the birth pangs.” Apocalypse is for the sake of birth not death. Yet most of us have heard this reading as a threat. Apparently, it’s not. Anything that upsets our normalcy is a threat to the ego but in the Big Picture, it really isn’t.
In Luke 21, Jesus says right in the middle of the catastrophic description: “Your endurance will win you your souls.” Falling apart is for the sake of renewal, not punishment. Again, such a telling line. In Mark 13, Jesus says “Stay awake” four times in the last paragraph (Mark 13:32–37). In other words, “Learn the lesson that this has to teach you.” It points to everything that we take for granted and says, “Don’t take anything for granted.”
We would have done history a great favor if we would have understood apocalyptic literature. It’s not meant to strike fear in us as much as a radical rearrangement.
It’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of worlds – our worlds that we have created.
Richard Rohr, This is an Apocalypse
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ‘tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, ii
Awareness is completely simple; we don’t have to add anything to it or change it. It is unassuming or unpretentious; Awareness is not a thing, to be affected by this or that. When we live from pure awareness, we are not affected by our past, our present, or our future. Because awareness has nothing it can pretend to, it’s humble. It is lowly. Simple. Practice is about developing or uncovering a simple mind.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special, Living Zen
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