Tag: heart

Sunday Quote: The mind of winter

Karl Duffy1 Comment

winter-trees

I love the feel of winter, when things are stripped back, and we can see the bare outlines of trees and branches. Wallace Stevens reminds us “One must have the mind of winter”.  As we look around at the rush and the celebrations, we can ask “what is really worth celebrating”? We end up being busy, running after experiences but somehow losing our ability to play. 

Where is the Life 
we have lost in living? 
Where is the wisdom 
we have lost in knowledge? 
Where is the knowledge we have lost 
in information?

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock

Take refuge in small things today

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File:Nanzenji green tea.jpg

And the heart, unscrolled,

is comforted by such small things:

a cup of green tea rescues us,

grows deep and large,

a lake

Jane Hirshfield, Recalling a Sung Dynasty Landscape

chris gladis

Not taken in

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File:Котёнок у окна.jpg

There is  great psychological wisdom in the ancient texts as to how to deal with the strong emotions stirred up by challenges we face every day. Being able to see, without making it a story about ourselves:

You shouldn’t chase after the past, and don’t place expectations on the future.
The past no longer is. The future has not yet come.

Whatever is present in life as it is in the very here and now
you clearly see, right there, right there.
Not taken in.  You dwell in stability and freedom

That’s how you develop the heart.

The Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya No.131.

Simple

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File:Flipchart1-Asio.JPG

The meaning of life is just to be alive.

It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic

as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Alan Watts.

photo asio otus

Being thankful ……or closing our eyes

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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Marimo_%285369843501%29.jpg

Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which garden we will tend … When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives,  but when we are grateful for the abundance that is present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure – the illusion of wasteland falls away and we experience heaven on earth.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

photo takashi hososhima

Brightness

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dark-river

The only true antidote to always wanting more, as this 8th Century  reminds us, is to be aware of, and rooted in,  our inherent completeness, an awareness which will contradict the arising feeling of never being satisfied.

There is a solitary brightness without fixed shape or form.
It knows how to listen to the teachings,
it knows how to understand the teachings,
it knows how to teach.
That solitary brightness is you.

Linji Yìxuán, Chinese Zen Buddhist monk, died 866