Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
G.K. Chesterson, Evening
Tag: Be fully present
Watching our “add-on’s”
No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
A famous Zen haiku reads: “The old Pond. A Frog jumps in. Plop” This is a wonderful description of bare attention. The poet, Basho, goes directly to the essence of his experience: the pond, frog, plop. We can say that in meditation we are developing “plop mind”. We are stripping away everything that is extraneous to our immediate experience and simply being present with what is happening. This is bare attention: direct, essential, non-interfering.
Joseph Goldstein, Bare Attention
The wave and the water
A wave may seem to have a beginning and end. A wave might be seen as high or low, big or small, different or not different from other waves. These terms – beginning, ending, high, low, more or less beautiful – they belong to the dimension called historical, but the wave is at the same time the water. Water transcends the form of the wave, the idea of beginning, ending, high, or low. These notions apply to the wave but not to the water. The moment when the wave realizes that she is water, she loses all her fear and she enjoys much more being a wave. She is free from birth and death, being and non-being, high or low, because when we are able to touch our ultimate dimension, we are no longer subjected to fear – fear of being; fear of non-being; fear of birth; fear of death.
Thich Nhat Hahn
The present and the story about the present
During a long retreat, I had what seemed to me the earthshaking revelation that we cannot be in the present and run our story lines at the same time! It sounds pretty obvious, I know, but when you discover something like this for yourself, it changes you.
Pema Chodron, When Things fall Apart
You will only grab hold of concepts if you follow the storyline.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
For no reason
Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars…
and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.
Everything is simply happy.
Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.
Look at the flowers – for no reason.
Osho
Photo: Oliver Bacquet
Noticing happiness
To take an in-breath and touch the conditions of happiness that are available, is something that all of us can do. Because of that we can stop and establish ourselves in the present moment. That is the teaching of living happily in the present moment. Please train yourself to make the present moment, the here and the now, into your true home. That is the only home that we have. That is the only place where we can touch life. Everything we are looking for must be found in the here and the now.
Thich Nhat Hahn
