Tag: Be fully present

Present and fundamentally kind

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Zen speaks of “expressing a dream within a dream”, acknowledging that we never quite rid ourselves of delusion and confusion, yet we can be present and fundamentally kind. There is so much bounty, so many tangled and twining vines, as well as so much lostness. Practice isn’t abut escaping any of it. It is about putting our feet on the ground, feeling the moist grass, knowing the wet stream of tears on a cheek…and not wandering off, looking for something better. “Here is the place; here the Way unfolds”, Master Dogen wrote.

Summer asks that we not confuse enlightenment with distraction. Where there is a dream of intractable pain, Buddhas show up to be a salve to that suffering. They show up for you. They are not other than you. “Just as cages and snares are limitless, emancipation from them is limitless” Dogen also wrote.

Bonnie Myotai Trace, A Year of Zen

Going forward

Karl Duffy1 Comment

This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.

Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481, Zen Buddhist monk and poet. 

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

Samuel Beckett, 1906 – 1989, Worstward Ho!

Loving well and living fully

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In the stress and complexity of our lives, we may forget our deepest intentions. But when people come to the end of their lives and look back, the questions that they most often ask are not usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or “How many books did I write?” or “What did I build?” or the like. If you have the privilege of being with a person who is conscious at the time of his or her death, you find the  questions such a person asks are very simple, “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?”

These simple questions go to the very center of spiritual life. When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears have limited us, and we can see the many opportunities for our hearts to open. Have we let ourselves love the people around us, our family, our community, the earth upon which we live? And, did we also learn to let go? Did we learn to live through the changes of life with grace, wisdom, and compassion? Have we learned to shift from the clinging mind to the joy of freedom?

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

Riches, in the ordinary

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It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Jane Hirshfield, It Was Like This: You Were Happy [extracts]

Look around

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When you get the hang of being more interested in life than in agreeing with your thoughts, then you will get the life you get. And you will be able to have as much happiness as you want with almost no effort whatsoever. When you stop believing your thoughts, you look around just for you, just because it is interesting to look around. Some people call that enlightenment. But you won’t call it that. You’ll be too interested in the new view.

John Tarrant, The Paradox of Happiness

The Way out

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Suffering isn’t dependent on the world being good or bad, but on how willing we are to use wisdom in this present moment.

The way out of suffering is now, in being able to see things as they are.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is