Like an elephant

In one of his insightful talks Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said that in your practice you should walk like an elephant.

It means to move at a comfortable pace. No rushing toward a goal. No push to make it all meaningful. The … texts of Taoism and Zen teach that it’s important to do what you do without trying to accomplish anything.

You don’t have to get anywhere. There are no goals and objectives: nothing to succeed in, and nothing in which to fail. You can sit in your house, as Thoreau did, and be attentive – his suggestion. “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it – a little? . . . If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?”
 

Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

The voice of the mind

There is nothing more important to true growth

than realizing you are not the voice of the mind –

You are the one who hears it

Michael Singer

What causes our agitation

There is a Noble truth about the arising of suffering:

It arises with a thirst for more, that is …always running here and there.

That is, a thirst for sense-input, a thirst to be something, a thirst to not be something.

The Buddha, The Turning of the Wheel Sutta

Sunday Quote: Underneath all the noise

Water is free from the birth
and death of a wave.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The dance

The invitation is to throw yourself into the dance,

whether the music is always of your choosing or not,

as if it were both an experiment and an adventure.

Jon Kabat Zinn

The mind is all stories

Dipa Ma taught that the mind is all stories, one after another, like nesting dolls. You open one, and another is inside. Open that one, and there is another story emerging. When you get to the last nesting doll, the smallest one, and open it, inside of it is – what? It’s empty, nothing there, and all around you are the empty shells of the stories of your life

Amy Schmidt, author, Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master

[Dipa Ma, 1911 – 1989 was an Indian meditation teacher of Theravada Buddhism, who had a big influence on early teachers in the Insight Meditation Society in Barre Massachusetts]