Tag: Be fully present

Whatever

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swallow

If you remember nothing else, always remember this one great secret of spiritual practice: we don’t have to feel any particular way. We don’t have to have special experiences, nor do we have to be any particular way. With whatever arises, whether it’s pleasing or not, try to remember that all we can do is experience and work with whatever our life is right now. No matter what life is and no matter how we feel about it, all that matters in practice is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on, and then stay present with the physical experience of that moment.

Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart

Ordinary everyday wisdom: The grass is green

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We have to be patient with ourselves. Over and over again we think we need to be somewhere else, and we must find the truth right here, right now; we must find our joy here, now. How seductive it is, the thought of tomorrow. We must find our understanding here. We must find it here; it is always here; this is where the grass is green.

 John Tarrant, Calling on the name of Avalokiteshvara

Monday morning encouragement: Keep going….trust

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We come here to search…

to go on searching through silence and meditation,

to get in touch with our inner life.

Christ always said,

Do not worry,

give yourself.

Br Roger of Taize

Sunday Quote: Where God appears

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God comes to you disguised as your life

Paula D’Arcy, Writer and retreat leader

Seeing what troubles our natural calm

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After a certain amount of sitting, the world looks brighter, sounds are sharper,

and there’s a richness of sensory input,

which is just our natural state if we are not blocking out experience with our tense worrying minds

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special 

Being joyful in an uncertain world

Karl Duffy4 Comments

The last sentence in this quote has become quite famous as a way of navigating the inevitable ups and downs of this life:

All life is sorrowful; there is however an escape from sorrow; the escape is nirvana – which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere, like heaven. It is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas – joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. 

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth