It is not a matter of looking for happiness
or trying to avoid suffering
but of going to the place beyond happiness or suffering
Ajahn Chah
Beyond
Tag: Be fully present
You didn’t mess up
I feel gratitude to the Buddha for pointing out that what we struggle against all our lives can be acknowledged as ordinary experience.
Life does continually go up and down. People and situations are unpredictable and so is everything else.
Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers. I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.
Pema Chodron
Watch the excuses
When you blame, you open up a world of excuses,
because as long as you’re looking outside,
you miss the opportunity to look inside,
and you continue to suffer.
Donna Quesada, Buddha in the Classroom: Zen Wisdom to Inspire Teachers
Balance
I suspect that we too often have lost contact with the source of our own existence and have become strangers in our own house. We tend to run around trying to solve the problems of our world while anxiously avoiding confrontation with that reality wherein our problems find their deepest roots: our own selves.
In many ways we are like the busy executive who walks up to a precious flower and says: “What for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy somehow?” and then finds the flower’s response incomprehensible: “I am sorry, but I am just here to be beautiful.”
How can we also come to this wisdom of the flower that being is more important than doing?
How can we come to a creative contact with the grounding of our own life?
Henri Nouwen
Tie your camel
On getting the right balance between action and acceptance:
Anas ibn Malik reported: A man said, “O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?”
The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Tie your camel and trust in Allah.”
Imam Abu `Isa Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Sunan al-Tirmidhī, 2517
Eating breakfast
We sometimes think that happiness comes from special circumstances or lofty insights, involving practices which require great effort, rather than the simple day-to-day circumstances before us:
Dropping off body and mind is good practice.
[There is]…nothing fundamental to rely on, including not others, not self, not sentient beings, and not causes or conditions.
Although this is so, eating breakfast comes first.
Dogen, 1200-1253, founder of the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism.
(“Dropping off body and mind” refers to sitting meditation)
Mindfulbalance 