Tag: Be fully present

We would rather be special

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When Zen Master Joshu was a young monk he asked his teacher Nansen “What is the Way?” His teacher replied “Your ordinary mind is the way”. By “ordinary,  Nansen meant the mind Joshu already had; he did not need to turn it, or himself, into something else. Unfortunately, these days when we hear the word ordinary, we are inclined to think that it means “average or typical” or even “mediocre”. We contrast ordinary with special and decide, given the choice, we would rather be special. But our practice wont make us special; it will keep bringing us back to who we are already.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Stuck in concepts

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There is great practical wisdom in understanding how the mind
creates boundaries of concern and interest, and how we can work
with these. Of course there are boundaries; there are other beings
on earth. But what counts is how those boundaries are maintained,
opened and closed.

When we consider otherness — the way beings
are different from us — we can feel either insecurity, ‘How does
she compare with me?’ or contempt, ‘You’re not as good as me’; or
fear and intimidation, ‘You’re better or stronger than me.’ Or, we
can feel adoration/attraction — ‘I want to be bonded to you.’

These immediate assumptions are called ‘conceit’: that is, we conceive
of people as worse, better or the same as us. The effect is that the
mind’s responsiveness gets stuck. 

Caught in the conceit of self-view, the heart doesn’t extend its boundaries of appreciation and concern. 

We take each other for granted as ‘my wife,’ ‘my boss,’ ‘my teacher’; and that fixing of them freezes our sensitivity. In that state, the heart easily tips over
into complaining about the other not being the way they ‘should
be’ (or rather the way I want them to be), and so the heart becomes
a breeding ground for ill-will.

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods

Harmony

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What is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and the life they live?

Albert Camus

The key

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Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful,

then no matter how much we have we will not be happy –

because we will always want to have something else or something more.

David Steindl-Rast, osb

Sunday Quote: Most Precious

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In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved.

And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?

Roshi Joan Halifax, Letting Go, Letting in Light:

Halifax Talks about Her Life & Groundbreaking Book, Being with Dying

On the island

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how would it be to allow for knowing
and not knowing:
allowing room
for the mystery
of creating
to be able to wonder
softly
without needing to understand everything
to trust in the process
to trust in love
to trust in the mystery and wonder
of the universe
that beats softly wildly
true
all round about us,
that is hidden
in the mists
in the clouds and the rain
in the wind blowing and the rain lashing down on your window,
reminding you
poetically
prosaically
that this is where you are,
on the island,
at the edge,
in a place of finding
and refinding,
and remembering
to remember
the feel of the mist, wind and rain.

Author Unknown, sometimes attributed to John O’Donohue