Drink you tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Slowly, evenly
Tag: balance
Inner Strength
At one point in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “I am the Self hidden in the heart.” He’s referring to one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the yoga tradition: the teaching that in our own bodies, in the subtle center called the heart, we can tune in to our true Self, the part of us that isn’t confused about what life is all about. That Presence is the “me” and the great source of true refuge.
The mystic poet Kabir speaks of this Presence as “the breath inside the breath.” His point is that it’s always closer than you think. Once you’ve learned how to tune in to Presence, you have a refuge that you can turn to at any time, even in the middle of a stressful business meeting or an argument with your spouse. One way to tune in to Presence right now is to focus on the space in and around your body. Inhale and exhale, feeling that. With the inhalation, you breathe that space in through your pores; as you exhale, you breathe it out. After a while, you should become aware of a subtle, delicate energy that is both inside your body and around it. According to the yoga tradition, this is Presence — and it is close to you at all times.
Sally Kempton, How to Find More Calm — Even When Life Feels Craziest
Look wide
Misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening.
Letting go
Human beings are made of water.
we were not designed
to hold ourselves
together,
rather run freely
like oceans,
like rivers.
Beau Taplin, Run Freely
Monday mornings
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering,
it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.
What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth.
Suffering is part of life,
and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Hard Times
Empty
Very windy these days, as first the tail end of the tropical storm passed over the country, and this morning Storm Ali shakes things up.
The first of the leaves start to fall.
The Heart Sutra says, “all phenomena in their own-being are empty.” “Own-being” means separate, independent existence… everything is a tentative expression of one seamless, ever-changing landscape. So no individual person or thing has any permanent, fixed identity.
Lewis Redmond, Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism
Mindfulbalance 