The key insight

Groundlessness, uncertainty, insecurity, vulnerability — these are words that ordinarily carry a negative connotation. We’re generally wary of these feelings and try to elude them in any way possible.

But groundlessness isn’t something we need to avoid. The same feeling we find so troubling when we open to it can be experienced as a huge relief, as freedom from all restraints. It can be experienced as a mind so unbiased and relaxed that we feel expansive and joyful.

Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

The small miracles of everyday

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

John O’Donohue, For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing

Cefalu, Sicily

Yes and No

By teaching “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1), the great teachers are saying that you cannot start seeing or understanding anything if you start with “no.”

You have to start with a “yes” of basic acceptance, which means not too quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as in or out, good or bad, up or down. You have to leave the field open, a field in which God and grace can move. Ego leads with “no” whereas soul leads with “yes.

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now

The current of life

Don’t change: Desire to change is the enemy of love.
Don’t change yourselves: Love yourselves as you are.
Don’t change others: Love all others as they are.
Don’t change the world: It is in God’s hands and he knows
.


And if you do that….. change will occur marvellously in its own way and in its own time
Yield to the current of life unencumbered by baggage.

Anthony de Mello sj.

Sunday Quote: Reaching the mystery

We all have an deep seated drive to seek happiness somewhere else, with special conditions

Reaching the mystery is nothing other than breaking through

and grabbing an ordinary person’s life.

Zen saying

Ordinary mind

When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

P’ang Yün (Layman Pang) died 808, famous lay practitioner of Ch’an Buddhism