Not a bad attitude to have as we start the day, seeing moments – even difficult ones – as “adventures” .
Wish that your journey be a long one,
full of adventures, full of knowing.
(Vα εύχεσαι να είναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις)
Cavafy’s advice to Odysseus before he set out on his voyage back to Ithaca
Mind always goes ahead or lags behind.
Remain with the moment.
Osho
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no path;
you make your own path as you walk.
Antonio Machado
A new month. We think we know where we are going.
Surely it is better to wait and see, moment by moment. Who knows where we will end up?
Whales follow
the whale-roads.
Geese, roads of magnetized air.
Yet how often
the heart
that set out for Peru
arrives in China,
Steering hard.
consulting the charts
the whole journey.
Jane Hirshfield, China
A very grey start to the day here in Ireland …but every day we are given opportunities to collect little moments of colour that give us courage to keep going and renew happiness.
We are invited not just to live life, but to celebrate it.
The poppies send up their orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while, the roughage
shines like a miracle as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course, loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light is an invitation
to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields, touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do —
what can you do about it —
deep, blue night?
Mary Oliver, Poppies
Here, Ajahn Sucitto, who gave a talk last evening in Geneva, sums up the whole of practice in an insightful way: Getting to know the mind, and the unskilful habits which lead to suffering:
We are all in this together
— wanting peace and harmony – but disappointing and irritating each other nonetheless.
‘It shouldn’t be this way, there shouldn’t be any suffering.’
But then isn’t understanding and letting go of suffering what it’s all about.
What else are we here for?
Ajahn Sucitto, Parami
Mindfulbalance 