The last day of the year in the Christian calendar. Advent starts this evening
How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames, our one work
is to open ourselves, to be
the flames?
Galway Kinnell, Another Night in the Ruins
The basic definition of meditation is “having a steady mind.” In meditation, when your thoughts go up, you don’t go up, and you don’t go down when your thoughts go down. Whether your thoughts are good or bad, exciting or boring, blissful or miserable, you let them be. You don’t accept some and reject others. You have a sense of greater space that encompasses any thought that may arise.
Chögyam Trungpa, Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
I have a certain faith in our ability to find the wisdom we need to co-create necessary change, if we are willing to sit with what is hard and the vastness of what we do not know.
Sometimes the darkness is a place of rest. And sometimes it is a place where we gather wisdom and strength to deepen our participation in the world.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering.
Oh praise the soul’s migration.
I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you.
I am again in love with the world.
Mark Nepo, In love with the World
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go…
The notion of the journey as a harbinger of resolution was once an essential element of the religious pilgrimage, defined as an excursion through the outer world undertaken in an effort to promote and reinforce an inner evolution.
Alain de Botton, A Week at the Airport
The Buddha famously avoided all questions about the afterlife, preferring to focus on what helped us deal with the challenges of this life. He said he was interested only in “suffering and the end of suffering” – practical skills for dealing with the mind.
Hakuin Zenji said, “If you want to know about life after death, ask the man who wants to know.” Thus there is no other way than to ask yourself, for this problem does not belong to the category of knowledge. You yourself must solve it by practice. Buddha’s practice after his enlightenment is not different from each individuals practice before enlightenment, if there is no idea of self. When you are engaged in selfless practice, you are free from the idea of past, present and future; from the idea of this world or another; from the idea of coming or going.
Shunryu Suzuki
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