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
Undisturbed
Tag: heart
A flash of lightning
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
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
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,
A juicy creative life
It’s time to get serious about joy and fulfillment, work on our books, songs, dances, gardens. But perfectionism is always lurking nearby, like the demonic prowling lion in the Old Testament, waiting to pounce.
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn’t go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart.
Don’t let this happen.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Instructions on Writing and lIfe
Even though
Piglet noticed that even
though he had a very small heart,
it could hold a rather
large amount of gratitude.
A.A. Milne
