Tag: Be fully present

The five remembrances

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Reminders to live fully, with joy and a deep appreciation of this precious human life.

The Buddha recommends that we recite the “Five Remembrances” every day:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health.

3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

Thich Nhat Hahn

In this time of change

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In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Round and round

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Mindfulness is paying attention to real time reality. This can seem like such a small thing – and it is. It is a state of attention that is as natural and soft and wordless as our peripheral vision. Yet mindfulness also means to remember… what? Mindfulness pulls us back to a greater living reality, reminding us that life is more than our own repetitive thoughts or fears or desires. Rooted in the present tense world of the body rather than the thoughts, the strangely named mindfulness (bodyfulness? Lifefulness?) delivers us from the hellish centrifugal force of our own egos.

Tracey Cochran, The Open Door

Not always pleased

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So here is the ongoing question that is my gauge for measuring my level of confusion – “In this moment, am I able to care?”. Not “Am I pleased?”

There are all sorts of things I don’t like. And in response to what I find unpleasant I often feel dismayed or impatient or annoyed or disappointed or grieved. What I try to so is to keep my mind from fighting with my experience, confusing and isolating itself in self-centred despair. The contentious mind is, by definition, confused. It hasn’t remembered that struggle creates suffering and a grateful response creates clarity. I am trying to stay unconfused and connected to my own kindness. Whenever I do, I relax, see what my options are and choose the nest of them. I wont always be pleased, but I’ll be happy.

Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an inside Job

Holding plans lightly

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Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
Chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
And end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
And fall in.

I should be suspicious
Of what I want.

Rumi

Saturday silence

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Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence.

It was an old theme even for me:
Language cannot do everything

Adrienne Rich, Cartographies of Silence, 3 and 7 [extracts]