We measure ourselves against others and imagine that the measurement defines the self.
Enkyo Pat O’Hara
Tag: Be fully present
Stand up
The current of life requires us to stand up, again and again, and we are not defeated when we are worn down, just exposed anew at a deeper level. We are meant to live in between the two. In this way, life keeps getting more and more precious. It is a natural law like gravity or osmosis: Stand up to be worn bare. It is how everything in the way is thinned, so that we can feel just how thoroughly alive we are.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Keep going
Life goes on.
No mountain peak actually impales the sun.
If you come to a gap in your path, jump across.
Han Shan, Chinese Chan (Zen) poet, 9th Century.
Essential and non essential
Each person naturally receives his allotted share in his life.
He need not concentrate on it, he need not search for it; the allotted portion is there.
You may rush around in search of riches, but what happens if death suddenly comes?
You should clear their minds of these non-essential things and concentrate on studying the Way.
Dogen, Shobogenzo Zuimonki
All human experience as a privilege
The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.
Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction, No. 198
Getting out of the way
Bernie Glassman, a Zen teacher, has a practice called ‘Bearing Witness.’ You go into a hard, complex situation with the mind of not knowing, of having no idea or opinion, and instead, feel, listen, and be in the actual situation, becoming one with it. This nonjudgmental state of mind can position you so that you might be able to find a way to help, not out of your own need to make something better so that you feel better or in order to alleviate your own fear, but so that you act when empty of yourself. You get yourself out of the way.
Natalie Goldberg, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language
