We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Enlightenment involves derailing and deconstructing the sense of lack. It is getting rid of that piece of psychology that in every moment says, ‘There’s something else that I should be having right now. There’s something else that I should be right now. There’s somewhere else that I could go right now. There’s somebody else who’s got it better than me right now. I’m not complete right now. I need to be something right now”.
Ajahn Sucitto, Parami: Ways to Cross Life’s Floods
photo sookie
One day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place you had lived in before you began
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on
and that you were more marvelous
in your simple wish to find a way, than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach: as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end of the road,
you found just a simple reflection.
David Whyte, Santiago from Pilgrim: Poems
The start of November is the start of Winter in the old Celtic calendar, and even if we follow a more universal way of marking time, there is no denying the shortening of the days and increasing darkness. One can see why one of the themes associated with this time of year is letting go. Is is also easy to understand why today became All Souls Day, the traditional day for remembering those who have died. It is still celebrated as an important day in the Latin countries, such as Italy, where cemeteries are covered in flowers as families take time to visit and remember. Sadness on a day like today is related to love, when we cannot be with someone who is dear to us. Learning how to live life fully and gratefully in each moment and yet still hold things lightly is one of the hardest and yet most important inner practices in our every day and in our lives.
All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I’m sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.
Frank O’Connor, 1903 – 1966, Irish writer of short stories
photo dudva
Nothing has ever been said about God
that hasn’t been said better by the wind in the pine trees
Thomas Merton
Most of us have a metaphor, conscious or not, that names our experience of life. Animated by the imagination, one of the most vital powers we possess, our metaphors are more than mirrors to reality — they often become reality, transmuting themselves from language into the living of our lives. We do well to choose our metaphors wisely.
“Seasons” is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think. It suggests that life is neither a battlefield nor a game of chance but something infinitely richer, more promising, more real. The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all — and to find in all of it opportunities for growth.
Parker Palmer, From Language to Life
photo SK
