Springing up and falling back

boat dunmore

Happiness is not to be found through great effort and willpower.

It is already present in open relaxation and letting go.  Don’t strain.

There’s nothing to do or to undo. Whatever momentarily arises in body–mind has no real import at all, has very little reality whatsoever.

Why identify with it and become attached to it, passing judgment on it and on yourself and others?

Far better simply to let the entire play just happen on its own,  springing up and falling back again like waves, without ‘rectifying’ things or manipulating things.

Just noticing how everything vanishes and then magically reappears, again and again and again. Time without end.

It’s only our searching for happiness that prevents us from seeing it.

Lama Gendun Rinpoche, Free and Easy

Security from letting go of it

Falling

The bad news is: you are falling through the air,

nothing to hang on to, no parachute.

The good news is: there’s no ground

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.

Rumi

 

Developing a refuge

photo

As I age I am grateful to find that a silence has begun to gather in me,

coexisting with my tempers and my fears,

unchanged by my joys or my pain. 

Rachel Naomi Remen

photo of monastery garden Bolton Abbey Kildare

Getting closer to real meaning

File:Penmaenmawr beach sands.jpg

May my silences become more accurate

Theodore Roethke, American poet, 1908 – 1963, Words for Young Writers 

photo richard outram

Gatekeepers

gate44

The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers:

Is it true?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?”

 Sufi Proverb

A sea of light

light-in-the-cave

The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute unknowing

Simeon the New Theologian, 949–1022