How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Anne Dilliard
photo: themightyquill
Tag: balance
Go easy
Went walking this week below the lovely village of Leighlinbridge, along the towpath of the River Barrow among trees and slow, easy-flowing, water. Here nature moves at a different pace and my thoughts turned to speed and purpose and the way, even from early morning, our minds – under the effect of a high pressure lifestyle – move towards compulsive activity. This is frequently linked to getting something done, an achievement, a future, or other people’s approval. Walking slowly in nature helps us tune into a different awareness, noting how we are, which often gets lost when we continually focus on who we are and how we are doing.
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees
photo kevin higgins : licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License
Just realize
Your true Self is always Present, Happiness is always Present.
You do not have to work at attaining it,
just remove the obstacles by which you cannot see it.
The hindrance is only one: Attachment to the past.
Sri H.W.L. Poonja ( Papaji), The Truth Is
Not giving up on ourselves
The idea of developing courage doesn’t seem to trigger people’s inadequacies. I think they know they have some courage. The problem is they think they’re supposed to be courageous in facing the outside world, whereas what is so profoundly transformative is the courage to look at yourself. It’s the courage to not give up on yourself, even though you do see your aggression, jealousy, meanness, and so on. And it turns out that in facing these things, we develop not self-denigration but compassion for our shared humanity.
Pema Chodron
photo Derek Harper
A meeting place
We need to prepare a meeting place, an awareness that can meet what arises without contracting. The basis of this is training in mindfulness: staying with contact without formulating a self and a reaction. This means that for a moment you can not know how things should be, or what to do. If you allow yourself this mindful uncertainty, that opens the essential space for a response rather than a reaction to arise. So when the feeling and the impression or ‘meaning’ come up, just wait right there. Don’t work from previous models. Don’t blink. Don’t try to change it. Don’t make a ‘me’ out of it. Then hold your awareness where it subsides. And with skill in that, the world of ‘me and it’ changes by itself.
Ajahn Sucitto, Is there an End?
photo steve evans from Citizen of the World
Allowing things to sit
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Beauty and Terror
I was intrigued reading over these words, just this morning as I sat watching my faithful pup breathe out a most-contented sigh : It’s as if in these short moments, simple flecks of time, he is able to surrender fully to all of life and that which life brings us. And just by breathing in…he settles in.
A friend joked the other day that he and his dog both suffered the troubles of a “5 minute memory”…as if, this was such a very bad thing. But, perhaps that is the trick of it, isn’t it? To allow things to sit, for only just a little bit — and then bid them farewell as they slip away into another day.
“No feeling is ever final.” Too often, we find ourselves struggling to hold onto happiness — fearing it forever lost in the wash of emotions that life carries with it. And we are left to wonder, how we may embrace the absolute richness of this life when we ourselves appear to weaken. How do we create a happiness that is big enough to experience all of these moments — the fear, the pain, the heartache and sorrow, and that will also allow for continuous gratitude, as well?
It’s this very impermanence that creates a space of ‘fully living.’ So, my dears, instead of worrying so very much over ‘what might have been’… “ flare up like a flame and make big shadows” .. for true happiness to settle in.
Pema Chodron, Finding Happiness Amongst Uncertainty
photo eugene0126jp
