Tag: balance

Appreciating the present

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Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware five minutes a day, you’re doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, but there is no reality apart from the here and the now. So this is a very concise teaching about zazen [sitting meditation], just a reminder to stay alive and be awake. Notice how much you tend to dwell in the past and speculate about the future; it will help you to practice more in this realm of appreciating your life in this moment.

Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Seeds of A Boundless Life

When thoughts are quietened

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For a peaceful meditation, we need not to go to the mountains and streams;

When thoughts are quieted down, even fire itself is cool and refreshing.

Extract from poem by Ch’an monk Tu Kou-hao, used as last words by Keizan Jōkin, abbot of Erinji, just before he was burned alive by soldiers in his temple.

Distraction

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Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet

The Source is full

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Everything you see has its roots
    in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
    yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
    But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal–
growing, branching out,
    giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?–
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
    is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
    Do not grieve,
    drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry —
This is the endless Ocean!

Rumi, A Garden beyond Paradise

Sunday Quote: Seasick

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If you don’t become the ocean,

you’ll be seasick every day

Leonard Cohen

Entrusting oneself to heaven

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When one has given up chasing after happiness…

Traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three quarts of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.

If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion
I cannot say – wealth and honor are nothing but dust.
As the evening rain falls,  I sit in my hermitage. 
And stretch out both feet in answer

Ryoken, 1758–1831, Zen Buddhist monk and poet