Tag: Be fully present

Being fully present for life

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Overnight, the first snow of the winter

A monk wanted to know what was the Great Wisdom.

The Master answered: “The snow is falling fast and all is enveloped in mist.” The monk remained silent. The Master asks: “Do you understand?” “No, Master, I do not”. 

Thereupon the Master composed a verse for him: Great Wisdom: It is neither taking in nor giving up. If one understands it not, The wind is cold, the snow is falling.

The monk is ‘trying to understand” when in fact he ought to try to look. The apparently mysterious sayings become much simpler when we see them in the whole context of “mindfulness” which in its most elementary form consists in “bare attention” which simply sees what is right there and does not add any comment, any interpretation, any judgment, any conclusion. It just sees. 

If one reaches the point where understanding fails, this is not a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite,

To let go of

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The journey to acceptance is about discovering what we need to let go of, rather than what we need to start doing.

By noticing moments of resistance throughout the day, you can start to become more aware of what prevents acceptance from naturally arising. This in turn will allow you to view the thoughts and feelings that arise during your meditation with a much greater sense of ease.

Andy Puddicombe, Ten Tips for Living more Mindfully

Not getting stuck in the hassles of each day

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You should train yourself thus: In what is seen, there is only the seen. In what is heard, there is only the heard. In what is sensed, there is only the sensed. In what is understood, only the understood.

This is how you should train yourself. When for you there is in what is seen, only the seen, in what is heard, only the heard, in what is sensed only the sensed and in what is understood only the understood, then there is no you in connection with what is seen, heard, sensed or cognized, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there nor anywhere in-between.

This and only this is the end of stress and unhappiness

The Buddha in the Bāhiya Sutta.

Sunday Quote: everywhere you look

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There is not a particle of life

which does not bear poetry within it.

Flaubert

Just do it

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I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.

Picasso

Derailing the sense of lack

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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