Now all you can do is wait.
It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything.
Like the ebb and flow of tides.
No one can do anything to change them.
When it is time to wait, you must wait
Haruki Murakumi, Japanese writer 1949 – , The Wind up Bird Chronicle
Meditation is the discovery
that the point of life is always arrived at
in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
with thanks again to Ellen for the beautiful autumn photo
The way that can be spoken is not the eternal way
That which can be named is not the eternal name
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 1
“Talking about a path is not walking that path.
Thinking about life is not living“.
Directly experiencing life is not something we do easily. By the time we are adults, our experience is mediated through a multitude of conceptual filters that provide a constant commentary about our life, but that ignore the thing itself. This process is so deeply conditioned in most of us that we don’t even notice it. We wander through day after day with our minds spinning an endless stream of thoughts, judgments, hopes, fantasies, critiques, and plans, all mixed with a babble of advertising jingles and fragments of television shows. Lao-tzu suggests that this habitual commentary on life, though a natural part of being human, is not the same thing as a fully lived life. At the same time, he does not totally discount the conceptual thinking process. We make a certain kind of sense out of our life through the use of categories, thoughts, and words. But, he suggests … these thoughts and words are gateways to life, not life itself.
Commentary on the Tao Te Ching by William Martin in A Path and A Practice
photo: without you
Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life.
Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever.
Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is.
Sylvia Boorstein
photo mate2code
Our conditioned mind tells us that we are missing something grand
Images of delightful experiences dance seductively in our heads
“If only we had the time” we sigh “life would be so good and happy”.
And then our attention returns to the fullness of the moment
and we realize we are here, and there is nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.
All the tastes and textures of life are here to be experienced now.
There is no other time.
There is no other place.
William and Nancy Martin, The Caregivers Tao Te Ching
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, “Well, that’s pretty much what I thought I’d see,” you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. […] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers
Early morning on the River Barrow at Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow
