Tag: heart

Letting go of our story lines

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Meditation practice provides a powerful antidote to the story lines of ego. We become expert in  recognizing when we are holding on to both overt and subtle versions of ourselves. In addition we also come to see how we re-create story lines as a way of pulling back from the very experiences we long for: spaciousness, clarity and compassion.…We may prefer to have a softer edge on reality when experiences arise that disconfirm our favourite story lines. We may subtly rework memories rather than see ourselves in an embarrassing or shameful light. We may also shrink away from our naturally tender and compassionate nature when to stay present means feeling our own pain or recognizing the pain of others……As we come to see our internal narratives for what they are – stories that distance us from our direct experience – they begin to lose their power.

Karen Kissel Wegela, The Courage to be Present

Genuine happiness comes from gently working with the mind

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If we could put as much effort into cleaning up our minds as we do sweeping our houses, washing our clothes and doing the dishes, we would likely be at ease. But when we talk about cleaning like this, people don’t know what we are getting at…I’ve come to think it’s because people don’t seek their own dwelling place. We scrub and sweep elsewhere. We don’t make our minds clean, so there is always confusion. We are always looking outside.

…These days there is only force and hurry. Mangoes are never sweet now. They are forced. Before they are ripe they picked and artificially ripened. This is done because people want to get them in a hurry. So when you eat them you find they are sour. To get something good, you have to allow it be sour first, according to its own natural way. But we pick them early and then complain that they are sour. For the most part things are imitations. We grasp the things that are false and uncertain as real…If the mind does not see and realize, there is no path to clarity. 

Ajahn Chah, Being Dharma

Running on tracks laid down by others

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Like a lot of people I know, I struggle with taking too much on, with doing too many things, with moving too fast, with overcommitting, with overplanning. I have learnt that I  must move, quite simply, at the pace of what is real. While this pace may vary, life always seems vacant and diminished when I accelerate beyond my capacity to feel what is before me. It seems we run our lives like, trains, speeding along a track laid down by others, going so fast that what we pass blurs on by. The we say we’ve been there, done that. The truth is that blurring by something is not the same as experiencing it.

So, no matter how many wonderful experiences come my way, no matter the importance placed on these things by others who have my best interests at heart, I must somehow find a way to slow down the train that is me until what I pass by is again seeable, touchable, feel-able. Otherwise I will pass by everything – can put it all on my resume – but will have experienced and lived through nothing.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

How to get the most from the holidays: Holding who you are

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All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact:  Be – don’t try to become.

Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained.

Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.

Osho

Where meaning is found

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The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart

When the full river of feeling overflows

Longfellow, Holidays

How to get the most from the holidays: Do all things deliberately and with attention

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“Conquer haste”, the Zen masters say. The writer Joe Hyams, describes how he learned that lesson in a meeting with the master Bong Soo Han. The two were having tea when a letter arrived from the teacher’s family in Korea. Hyams says: ‘Knowing he had been eagerly anticipating the letter, I paused in our conversation, expecting him to tear open the envelope and hastily scan the contents. Instead, he put the letter aside, turned to me, and continued our conversation. The following day I remarked on his self-control, saying that I would have read the letter at once.’

“I did what I would have done had I been alone,” he said. “I put the letter aside until I had conquered haste. Then when I set my hand to it, I opened it as though it were something precious.”  I puzzled over this comment a moment, knowing he meant it as a lesson for me. Finally I said I didn’t understand what such patience led to. “It leads to this,” he said. “Those who are patient in the trivial things in life have the same mastery in great and important things.”

Philip Toshio Sudo.