Tag: Gentleness

A motto for this week

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What do we live for,

if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

George Eliot

The important things cannot be rushed

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Too often, our results-oriented mood also spills over into our spiritual practices. We want to get as much as possible, as quickly as possible, from as little commitment as possible. I pick up on this after the meditation sessions I lead where people get a glimpse into how unpredictable and completely scattered their minds are. Even though everyone tries their level best to keep the mind focused, the mind escapes to a thought, a plan, a conversation, or a fantasy without the individual even realizing that it went somewhere. This experience often inspires them to ask me, “How long did it take you to control your mind?” My response every single time is, “I’m still trying.”

It seems as if we have a need to accomplish something. We’re always trying to reach the finish line so that we can feel a sense of completion and move on to something else. However, meditation and spirituality are never quite like that. The other day, someone wrote me a question on Facebook: “What is the fastest way for one to remove one’s bad karma?” I responded by saying, “I wish there was a fast way to burn off karma. The purpose of karma is not only to give us a reaction for our positive or negative actions, but also to teach us valuable lessons about life, our character and behavior, and our interactions with others. These things in life usually can’t be rushed. Otherwise, we wouldn’t learn from them.”

Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, Fast Food Spirituality in the Huffington Post, 19 June 2012.

Quiet acts of kindness

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Affection would not be affection, if it was loudly and frequently expressed . . . It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor.

 C. S. Lewis,  The Four Loves,

We become what we practice

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The painful thing is that when we buy into disapproval, we are practicing disapproval. When we buy into harshness, we are practicing harshness. The more we do it, the stronger these qualities become. How sad it is that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others. The trick then is to practice gentleness and letting go. We can learn to meet whatever arises with curiosity and not make it such a big deal.

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart:Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Relaxing with your body and mind

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When you don’t punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness toward yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately. You don’t feel that you have to ignore your problems or exaggerate your potential. That kind of gentleness toward yourself and appreciation of yourself is very necessary. It provides the ground for helping yourself and others

Chögyam Trungpa, The Sanity We Are Born With

A mix of strength and weakness

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Our lives are a mystery of growth from weakness to weakness, from the weakness of the little baby to the weakness of the aged. Throughout our lives we are prone to fatigue, sickness and accidents. Weakness is at the heart of each one of us. Weakness becomes a place of chaos and confusion, if in our weakness we are not wanted; it becomes a place of peace and joy, if we are accepted, listened to, appreciated and loved.

Some people are infuriated by weakness. Weakness awakens hardness and anger in them. But to deny weakness as part of life is to deny death, because weakness speaks to us of the ultimate powerlessness, of death itself.  To be small, to be sick, to be dying, are stages of powerless, they appear to us to be anti-life and so we deny them.  If we deny our weakness and the reality of death, if we want to be powerful and strong always, we deny part of our being, we live an illusion. To be human is to accept who we are, this mixture of strength and weakness. 

Jean Vanier,  Becoming Human