I have nothing to report my friends,
But if you wish to find meaning
Stop chasing after so many things
Ryōkan Taigu, Zen Poet, 1758 – 1831
Tag: balance
Observing everything
The essence of all practice, is to learn to look beyond the sensory world, learn to abide beyond perception. One way that we can do this is to look upon life as something that flows through the mind. Rather than thinking of oneself as a person who is going places, consider these as images going through the mind. Right now we have the image of the meditation hall; this is what we can perceive. The sound of this voice; the feeling of sitting on a cushion; the sense of sight; see that all these things flow through the mind like a current. When Ajahn Sumedho went traveling recently he said he made the determination before he left that he wasn’t going to go around the world, he was just going to let the world go through his mind. Afterwards he said the result was very peaceful: he went everywhere, saw everyone, did everything, but the sense of movement, of a person heading towards somewhere, was absent; there was stillness in its place.
Ajahn Amaro
photo keven law
Sunday Quote: Whole
The hardest thing I’ve learned,
and still struggle with,
is that I don’t have to be finished in order to be whole.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
photo of Michelangelo, Rebellious Slave, by Hay Kranen
Stuck
In the face of the new and uncertain, we often return to the old place, which is why we so often stop growing. This is an example of what Jung called “the regressive restoration of the persona,” namely, the re-identification with a former position, role, ideology because it offers a predictable content, security, and script. (It has become clear to me, for example, that aging in itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities). Regression, which we all suffer from time to time, is an abrogation of our summons to live more fully into the world, to risk being who we are, and to accept the gift that our differences bring to the collective.
James Hollis, What Matters Most
photo chris upson
Beyond the seen
The search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
photo rosh prakash
The marvellous everyday
Last week I visited the remains of the ancient Irish Celtic monastery at Clonmacnoise, founded in 546 by Saint Ciaran and which had a significant impact upon European learning in the following Centuries. All that visibly remains now are the ruins of some churches and two beautiful High Crosses. While there I remembered a poem by Seamus Heaney which refers to a marvellous story from 748 AD when a ship floated by in the sky. (The heavenly realms were frequently imagined as an ocean in those times, and were seen to be as real as life on earth). The monks were at prayers, they looked up, and watched the ship go by in the sky. Then, out of the ship, came an anchor, which fell and hooked itself to the altar.… the ship finds itself stuck, it cannot go forward. A sailor climbs down the rope, to try to un-hook the anchor, but began to “drown” in our air. The monks realized this, and hurried to free the anchor, and they helped the man back up to the ship.
Heaney’s poem sees in this story the mingling between worlds. His beautiful words – “out of the marvellous” – strikes us, as it shows that, for the sailor from “up there”, the world “down here” is new and wondrous. In all of Heaney’s later poems we see everyday miracles and otherworldly wisdom in the ordinary of every day. Our mundane world of meetings and conversations is full of depth, if we pay attention. We are reminded: there are enough marvels in this world, if we have the eyes of wonder to see them.
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.
– Lightenings viii, 1991
photo from the blog richie abroad
