Tag: heart

Where is our home

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Most of nature – plants and animals – have periods of rest. We find it hard.

All of our unhappiness comes from one thing only, which is the inability to sit quietly, in a room alone. Pascal

[Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.]

I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass….

I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.

Wendell Berry 1934- American poet, environmental activist and farmer, Stay Home

For the good

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Albert Einstein once said that the most important question a human being could answer is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we are willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth. As soon as we begin to …..open to faith in a friendly universe, the proverbial path opens before us. The people, events and teachings we need are supplied. This is the action of grace.

Joan Borysenko, Fire in the Soul: A New Spirituality of Spiritual Optimism

Undisturbed

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I gaze on myself in the stream’s emerald flow,
Sit on a boulder by a cliff.

My mind, a lonely cloud,
Leans on nothing, needs nothing
From the world and its endless events.

HanShan, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist poet

A flash of lightning

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A lot of thunderstorms these days in Ireland

The Buddha often used images to try to convey some of this sense of all appearances arising, with nothing we can hold on to. He said life is like a rainbow, an echo, a dream, a drop of dew on a blade of grass, a flash of lightning in a summer sky.

What does a deeper glimpse into this truth of change offer us, ultimately? We see that there is a tender, exultant beauty to every hour, in fact to every minute we have just because we are alive. ..The fragility and dynamism of life is what makes it so vital. Every experience, every encounter, every realized desire, and every unfulfilled longing that comes into our lives is moving, changing…

Life is short, and it is sacred

Sharon Salzberg, Real LIfe: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom

Don’t pick them up

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One day a visitor to Ajahn Chah’s monastery said to him “You have so much going on here! You have dozens of monks and nuns under your guidance and now this big building project going on. And you have these 30 to 40 branch monasteries all around.

So many things to do. So many responsibilities….

It must be really hard work for you?“

In response, Ajahn Chah pointed to some nearby stones. “Do you think they are heavy?”

And the visitor replied, “Oh yes, really heavy”

To which Ajahn Chah replied, “Not if you don’t pick them up”

As told by Ajahn Amaro, Amaravarti podcast talk, Chapter 3.20 – Practicing Dharma

Big Mind

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From the great Suzuki Roshi. A lot to ponder here but I do like the idea of seeing all that happens as an unfolding of big mind:

Because we enjoy all aspects of life as an unfolding of big mind,

we do not care for any excessive joy.

So we have imperturbable composure.

Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,