Tag: Be fully present

Gates

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When we wake up in the morning, right away we turn on the computer and check our email or read the news on our phone… We live in a world of constant information, available any time and anywhere. But in such a world, we have all the more reason to maintain proper on and off switches.

This is why distinctions are so important. Try erecting gates in your mind

For example, the threshold of your home constitutes the first gate. When you leave home and cross this first gate, thoughts of work of work start to form in your head. The door of your car or the train is the second gate; once you cross it you start planning out your work day. And finally, when you arrive at your office and cross the third gate, you are ready to focus on your work

When the work day is over and you arrive back at the first gate, it’s important to leave work behind. 

Shunmyo Masuno, Zen The Art of Simple Living

Keep knocking

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Commit yourself to a daily practice

your loyalty to that is like a ring at the door

Keep knocking and eventually the joy that lives inside

will look out to see who is there

Rumi

Letting sorrow drop

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As water falls from a lotus leaf

so sorrow drops from those

who are free of toxic craving

Dhammapada 336

The sorrows of life can convince us they are really important. They seem to demand a huge amount of attention. However…if mindfulness practice is mature, we will be able to observe suffering when it arises without becoming too fascinated by it. We will be able to reflect wisely on the reality of the moods we have, not just be sensitive to them. They are not ultimate – they come and go. 

Commentary by Ajahn Munindo

Relating to challenges

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Unless we live all our lives in the torment of the contradictions, as C.G. Jung insists, then we’re not human. We can’t become whole. If you’re stuck, and you don’t know what to do, stuck between two opposites, and you allow them each to live within you, then a small transformation of the ego takes place. It becomes related to the Self instead of identifying with it. 

Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer

Breathe

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Bring those spaces into your everyday life, as many as possible. When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, I don’t have time. But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

Eckhart Tolle, in interview with Oprah Winfrey

Sunday quote: Nowhere to go

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Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.

Thomas Merton