Our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to .
It’s who we are right now,
and that ‘s what we can make friends with and celebrate.
Pema Chodron
Tag: heart
When you see fear today
When you are frightened by something, you have to relate with fear, explore why you are frightened, and develop some sense of conviction. You can actually look at fear. Then fear ceases to be the dominant situation that is going to defeat you. Fear can be conquered. You can be free from fear if you realize that fear is not the ogre. You can step on fear, and therefore, you can attain what is known as fearlessness. But that requires that, when you see fear, you smile.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Sunday Quote: Becoming what we repeatedly do
We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle
Seeing thoughts as less substantial…
The wind whistles in the bamboo and the bamboo dances.
When the wind stops, the bamboo grows still.
A silver bird flies over the autumn lake.
When it has passed,
the lake’s surface does not try to hold on to the image of the bird.
Huong Hai
Fearlessness
True fearlessness is wise action, not false bravado or blind reactivity. It requires that we take time and exercise discernment. Zen teacher Joan Halifax speaks about the “practice of non-denial.” When we feel afraid, we don’t deny the fear. Instead, we acknowledge that we’re scared. But we don’t flee. We stay where we are and bravely encounter our fear. We turn toward it, we become curious about it, its causes, its dimensions. We keep moving closer, until we’re in relationship with it. And then, fear changes. Most often, it disappears. [There are] many quotes from different traditions that speak to this wonder of fear dissolving. “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.” “The only way out is through.” “Put your head in the mouth of the demon, and the demon disappears.”
Margaret Wheatley, Can I be Fearless?
Prolonging the gap
It does not really get explained any more simply than this:
One day when our master Jamyang Khyentse was watching a lama dance in front of the Palace Temple in Gangtok…he was chuckling at the antics of the … clown who provides light entertainment between dances. [A Student] Ana Pant kept pestering him, asking him again and again how to meditate, so this time when my master replied, it was in such a way as to let him know that he was telling him once and for all: “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn’t there a gap?” “Yes” said Ana Pant. “Well, prolong it. That is meditation”.
Sogyal Rinpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse.
Mindfulbalance 