No striving, no grasping at this or that, no entertaining any self-involved stories whatsoever.
Instead, attention pivots toward a light in the heart in which the ‘field of boundless emptiness’ is revealed.
All questions and doubts are put to rest.
Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091–1157, Chinese Chan Buddhist monk
False views make up the world
true views are from the world beyond,
when true and false are both dismissed
your buddha nature will manifest
this is simply the straightforward teaching…
delusion lasts countless kalpas
awareness takes but an instant.
Huineng, 638 – 713, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” school of Buddhism
[a kalpa is a long period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thinking]
Can you remember who you were,
before the world told you who you should be?
Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994, American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
A new month…
The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.
May Sarton, The Angels and the Furies
To meditate is often to move through a land without paths.
In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves – There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind’s eye much wider…
Mindfulness …means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.
from Christophe Andre’s lovely book, Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment through Art
If you look for the Buddha outside of your own mind,
the Buddha becomes the devil
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.
Mindfulbalance 