Tag: Be fully present

The ordinary mystery

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Ordinariness is a simple presence in this moment that allows the mystery of life to show itself. When Thoreau warns us to “beware of any activity that requires the purchase of new clothes” he reminds us that simplicity is the way we open to everyday wonder. While consciousness can create a variety of forms, ordinariness is interested in what is here and now. This is the ordinary mystery of breathing or of walking, the mystery of trees on our streets or of loving someone near to us. It is not based on attaining mystical states or extraordinary powers. It does  not seek to become something special, but is emptying, listening.

Jack Kornfield, Bringing home the Dharma

The basic instructions

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Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver, Sometimes

Attentive to all around

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And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light,

there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself,

and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. . . .

I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life

I too dip myself toward the immeasurable.

Mary Oliver,  Winter Hours

Sunday Quote: How we live where we live

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The value of a life does not depend on the place we occupy;

It depends on the way we occupy that place.

Therese of Lisieux

A way of being with the joyful and the painful

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If we practice mindfulness, we get in touch with the refreshing and joyful aspects of life in us and around us, the things we are not able to touch when we live in forgetfulness.  Mindfulness makes things like our eyes, our heart, our non-toothache, the beautiful moon and the trees deeper and more beautiful.  If we touch these wonderful things with mindfulness, they will reveal their full splendor. 

[But also]..when we touch our pain with mindfulness, we will begin to transform it.  When a baby is crying in the living room, his mother goes in right away to hold him tenderly in her arms. Because mother is made of love and tenderness, when she does that, love and tenderness penetrate the baby and, in only a few minutes, the baby will probably stop crying.  Mindfulness is the mother who cares for your pain every time it begins to cry.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Touching Peace

Using time wisely

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To truly be kind to others (and ourselves for that matter), it helps to abandon time slavery and try to notice what kind of time others are keeping, to notice their face and their gesture, to know when they are ready to say something, ready to be quiet, ready to come, to go, to be led, to be followed. So many times I have been unable to listen or to notice what someone was going through or where they were headed because it didn’t meet with my schedule. Patience and timing are inextricably linked. Patience, which we can regard with such excruciation, offers a hidden reward. When we stop watching the pot, we may learn that it boils right on time.

Sometimes my father would forget to wind the big clock, the weights would fall, and time would stop. We wind the clock. It does not have to wind us.

Barry Boyce, What Time is Now?