If things get busy today,
a simple practice of reconnecting with the rhythm of breathing can help
Breathing in I calm my body and mind.
Breathing out I smile.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Tag: Be fully present
Taking time
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between us
Sunday Quote: Being distracted
Normally we do not so much look at things
as overlook them
Alan Watts
photo remi carreiro
Becoming patient
From a different tradition to this morning’s post, but with a similar point to make. Catholic writer Henri Nouwen encourages the development of patience in order to fully enter into and see what is in front of us. Too often we rush and do not allow the moment, the person, or the event reveal themselves as they are. We dismiss the moment as not interesting, or see it from our own place, not able to leave it “right there, right there” as the Buddha said this morning.
If we cannot be patient, we cannot become patient. We cannot be compassionate. If we ourselves are unable to suffer, we cannot suffer with others, which is the meaning of compassion. Patience is the capacity to see, hear, touch, taste and smell as fully as possible the inner and outer events of our lives. It is to enter our lives with open eyes, ears, and hands, so that we really know what is happening. Patience is an extremely difficult discipline precisely because it counteracts our unreflective impulse to flee or to fight. Patience requires us to go beyond the choice between fleeing or fighting. It is the third and most difficult way. It calls for discipline because it goes against the grain of our impulses.
Henry Nouwen, Compassion
photo schnaggli
Clear seeing of whatever is present
You shouldn’t chase after the past, or place expectations on the future.
What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see, right there, right there.
Not taken in; unshaken.
That’s how you develop the heart.
The Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta
Our silent war
At almost any point in my day if I stop and check down inside, I will find some version of my silent mantra – this moment should be different! – going on. I dislike how it is right now. It is not so pleasant. I want it to be like it was the other day, last week, last year. Or, I love how it is right now. It’s very pleasant. I want it to stay. How can I make this pleasant feeling stay? How can I keep the flow of experience from snatching it away? Oh don’t let it go. Each of us has our own silent War With Reality. And whatever our particular War With Reality is, the result is always a pervasive sense of the unsatisfactoriness of the moment.
Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga
