Tag: Be fully present

A portable home

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Your true home is something you have to create for yourself.  When we know how to make peace with our body, take care of and release tension in our body, then our body becomes a comfortable peaceful home for us to come back to in the present moment.  When we know how to take care of our feelings, how to generate joy and happiness and handle a painful feeling, we can cultivate and restore a happy home in the present moment.  And when we know how to generate energies of understanding and compassion our home will become very cosy and a pleasant place to come back to.  Home is not something to hope for but something to cultivate.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The bush may flare

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There is no less holiness at this time – as you are reading this – than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha’s bo tree. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Everything is the way

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If you view everything as practice,

your suffering will disappear.

Shido Bunan, 1603-1676, Japanese Zen master

Inner Peace

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In a village or in a forest,

In deep water or on dry land

Wherever an awakened person lives

That place is a peaceful dwelling

Dhammapada, 98

A long party

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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party that your life is.

William Stafford A Valley Like This

Life passing us by

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That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance. If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet. We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach. We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment which will magically appear once this and this and this happens. But what’s happening right now is “it” and it’s the only “it” we have. The rest is just fabrication.

Tenzin Palmo