A similar theme on staying in the present moment, this time from the early Christian tradition
One of the early Desert Fathers said
‘There is no such thing as delay with the Holy Spirit.’
This means that everything happens at the right moment.
Laurence Freeman, Common Ground: Letters to a World Community of Meditators
photo: inexplicable
Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.
Mary Oliver, Hum
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves –
slowly, evenly,
without rushing toward the future
Thich Nhat Hanh
photo mover el bigote
In meditation one tries to calm the body and the senses, to calm the mind, and become what’s called “the silent witness,” the witness beyond the mind. We in the West think that the mind is everything, but all Eastern practice is to get beyond the mind to the point of the silent witness, where you’re witnessing yourself, where you’ve gone beyond the ego, beyond the self.
The Indian tradition rests on what the West has largely lost: that there are three levels. There is the level of the body and the level of the mind, which the Western world thinks is the end. But beyond the body is the spirit. And that is the goal of life, to get to that.
Bede Griffiths
photo uros novina
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened
but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, just
like a clock during a thunderstorm.
Robert Louis Stevenson
photo steven depolo
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
Wendell Berry
photo rod allday
