Tag: balance

Our astonished emotions

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It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its inner most chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our bloodstream.

Rilke, Letters to a Yong Poet

Ordinary

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Many of the great Zen and Taoist teachers emphasized the ordinary and the dangers of spiritual importance:

Emperor Wu: ‘I have built many temples, copied innumerable Sutras and ordained many monks since becoming Emperor. Therefore, I ask you, what is my merit?’

Bodhidharma: ‘None whatsoever!’

Emperor Wu: ‘Why no merit?’

Bodhidharma: ‘Doing things for merit has an impure motive and will only bear the puny fruit of rebirth.’

Emperor Wu, a little put out: ‘Well, what then is the most important principle of Buddhism?’

Bodhidharma: ‘Vast emptiness. Nothing sacred.’

Emperor Wu, by now bewildered, and not a little indignant: ‘Who is this that stands before me?’

Bodhidharma: ‘I do not know.’

If we can allow ourselves to live an ordinary life while also staying awake to the great void at the center of all that is, then we can be this intermediary place between that intoxicating, mystical bliss of oblivion and the wonder of how the Divine creates and reveals Itself in all the forms of life. Our lives are the expression of this bridge – ordinary and extraordinary, all things in their place, everything free to be as it is, and our consciousness, our heart, free to be used as needed.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Taking the step

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The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes

because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it

Simone Weil, 1909 -1943, French Philosopher

Restless ambition

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or, in Ireland’s case these days, a lot of rain….

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another — why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,

I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

Mary Oliver, Black Oaks

Stopping

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Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else

is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit

Tara Brach

The Three times

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The past is already past — Don’t try to regain it.

The present doesn’t stay — Don’t try to hold onto it over and over.


The future isn’t here yet — Don’t ponder it beforehand.

When we can see the three times as non-existent,
the mind is the same as awakened nature.

Layman P’ang, c740 – 808, Chinese Zen