When you check your own mind properly,
you stop blaming others for your problems
Lama Thubten Yeshe, Your mind is your religion
Tag: balance
Sunday Quote: Infused
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5, v 16
When we fall down
A student asked master Sozan, “The teachings say that everyone who falls down on the ground must stand up again by relying on the ground. What is the meaning of to fall down?”
Sozan said, “If you affirm the situation, that is the answer.”
The student said, “What is the meaning of standing up?”
Sozan said, “Just stand up!”
“What is it to fall down?”
Sozan, Chinese Chan/Zen master, died 606 AD
We think hitting the ground, knocking over the barrier is a mistake, but the ground we hit, the failure we experience is not a mistake. The world is endlessly mysterious, experience is profound to a degree that will always surprise us. But it is never a mistake. To foster even a meager appreciation of that (and when we’re in the midst of a fall, meager is pretty big) is to begin to practice… It is the decision to stop complaining and to start paying attention. Contained in the fall is exactly what we need to stand. Everything we need is available, but we have to invite it. What is it to invite reality?
Bonnie Myotai Treace Sensei M.R.O, Dogen Cubed
Juggling your life
This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.
Rose Cook, A Poem for Someone Who is Juggling Her Life
Making space to see
An American poet, for the day that is in it…
I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.
Mary Oliver
Let go
When we let go of the continual construction of a self or even the need to be a “somebody,” then we are free to be who we are. When we are completely ourselves, we forget about needing to be the center of our perceptual world and thus we can take in others and our environment with greater sensitivity, compassion, and openness
Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga
