Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid.
Pema Chodron
No matter how much we like or dislike, or are hurt or maimed by a thought, action or event, our attitudes do not colour the event itself, only our relationship to it.
As this is so, no matter how much we stomp or shout or cajole or whine, reality is what it is. In this is sacredness and dignity.
Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi, Cutting the Cat Into One: the Practice of the Bodhisattva Precepts
May anxiety never linger about you. May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention. Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift, woven around the heart of wonder.
John O’Donohue, For Presence
Inner calmness is a way of being that can transform our lives. Taking one thing at a time as our focus, letting the imperfections of life be, fosters a sense of the present, a contentment with the moment. At first our meditation may develop in some ways but still be mixed with a quality of striving or judgment. As we sit, extraordinary levels of silence & peace can open for us.
We can learn how happiness comes from a heart at rest and not from changing outer circumstances.
Jack Kornfield
Ancient wisdom for the day that is in it. It can apply to both people outside of us or to the complaining voice inside of us that forever “argues” with how things are:
Get away from any man who always argues every time he talks.
Abbot Pastor in Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century
All Saints Day, starting a month were there is an emphasis on simplifying, remembering and integrating, imitating the slower pace of nature. This is somewhat different to the current fashion of accumulating and rushing around at this time, as the main shopping festivals arrive.
Maybe a side effect of the pandemic this year will be to slow things down and remind us of what is important
The man to whom little is not enough
will not benefit from more.
Saint Columbanus, 540 – 615, Irish monk, missionary and founder of monasteries.
One is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence of greed.
Gurdjieff, 1866- 1949
