Life as a long party

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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.

William Stafford, American Poet, A Valley Like This

The wave and the water

Waves1A 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

New ways

cowpathThe truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

M Scott Peck

Noticing happiness

Thich-nhat-hanh-i-am-home-i-have-arrived_largeTo 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

Keeping mental energies in awareness

The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are! Let form be just form, let sound be just sound, let thought be just thought. Why should we bother to attach to them? If we think and feel in this way, then there is detachment and separateness. Our thoughts and feelings will be on one side and our heart will be on the other. Just like oil and water — they are in the same bottle but they are separate.

Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart

What we long for

File:Blandat 001.jpgIf you want to build a ship,

don’t gather people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work,

but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

photo: Staffan Ström