Following on from yesterdays post…Issa’s poems are very simple and very beautiful
Simply trust:
Do not the petals flutter down,
Just like that?
Issa (1763-1828), Japanese Buddhist poet
photo: cogdogblog
Tag: Be fully present
The teachers we need
Life always gives us
exactly the teacher we need
at every moment.
This includes every mosquito,
every misfortune,
every red light,
every traffic jam,
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss,
every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction,
every piece of garbage,
every breath.
Every moment is the guru.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Just watching
I remember I would sometimes go visit Ajahn Sumedho in his room. On the wall he had a picture of an old man sitting inside his little cottage on a rainy day, sitting just inside the window, looking out, and in his hand he held a cup of coffee. And I remember Ajahn Sumedho saying, for him this was the essence of meditation. It was really nothing more than just relaxing, and watching the happening of existence. Nothing needed to be explained. Nothing needed to be worked out. There’s just the event of existence presenting itself. Everything we are is simply presented. Whatever words come out, come out, but they’re not important; they’re simply the movement or the non-movement of whatever this happening is and it’s happening all by itself.
Darryl Bailey
Nothing can land there
The Buddha’s instructions to his son, Rahula, who was aged seven:
Rahula, develop your meditation so that it is like space,
for when you develop meditation that is like space,
the agreeable and disagreeable contacts that arise will not invade your mind and remain.
Just as space is not established anywhere, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like space.
Four smiles: a practice for this day of work
This exercise is called the four smiles exercise.
Basically all you do is take a moment, let your mouth soften into a smile, then expand that smile for each of the next three breaths. First, expanding it so you feel your whole mouth, not just your lips, but your whole inner mouth soften and rise into a smile. Your forehead, your throat, and you keep feeling that smile expand until you feel it in your heart. That literally takes four breaths and you’re feeling a lot more buoyant.
Tzivia Gover
Each day is a new day
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof. Matthew 6:34
Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.
Abba Poemen Egyptian monk (c. 340–450)
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