Just sitting means just that. That ‘just’ endlessly goes against the grain of our need to fix, transform, and improve ourselves. The paradox of our practice is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave ourselves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another.
Barry Magid, Leave yourself alone
photo nevit dilmen
Trauma is not just the result of major disasters. It does not happen to only some people. An undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence. I like to say that if we are not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder. There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster. One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us. Nobody is immune. Our world is unstable and unpredictable, and operates, to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advancement, outside our ability to control it.
Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Being Alive, New York Times, August 2013
Image taken from rawforbeauty.com
We are already one.
But we imagine that we are not.
And what we have to recover is our original unity.
What we have to be is what we are.
Thomas Merton
Most people want to have pure clarity,
but sweep as you will,
you cannot empty the mind.
Keizan Jokin, Zen master, 1268–1325
At the moment of going there, just go there.
At the moment of coming here, just come here.
There is no gap
Dogen, Guidelines for Studying the Way
