No grasping or resistance

Ajahn Buddhadasa, a colleague of Ajahn Chah, made a point of directing his students to look for nirvana in the simplest ways, in everyday moments. “Nirvana,” he would say, “is the coolness of letting go, the inherent delight of experience when there is no grasping or resistance to life. It is always available. Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Instead we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease…In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed and well. Why don’t we feel thankful for this everyday nirvana?” 

Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart, Buddhist Psychology for the West.

Sunday quote: light

C’est la Nuit qu’il est beau de croire à la lumière

It is at night that it is beautiful to believe in the light

Edmond Rostand, 1868 – 1918, French poet and dramatist

Sunday quote: our deep sense

We should not give up on our dreams or any deep sense that persists over time, or let it be blocked by our fears.

Since the powers of nature in this dreamer, in that dreamer, and in the macrocosm of nature itself, are the same, only differently inflected,

the powers personified in a dream are those that move the world.

All the gods are within you,

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God

Sunday Quote: The key journey

You are the traveler,

you are the path

and you are the destination.

Be careful never to lose the way to yourself.

Shahāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī, 1154 -1191, Persian Philosopher known as The Master of Illumination

July…..seek joy

An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: To love a genuine love.
The feet: To chase after it.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.

Rumi, Night and Sleep

Warm sunlight

Incredibly warm, sunny weather here this last week. A world bathed in warmth and life and love.

Look at the sunlight.

You see it is near, yet if you follow it ….you can’t catch it in your hands. Then you say it’s far away and yet you see it right before your eyes. Follow it and you see that it escapes you; Run away from it and it follows you close. You can neither hold onto it, nor be finished with it.

From this you come to see what is the true nature of all things

and then understand: There is no need to be sad or worry about things.

Huang Po, died 850, Zen Buddhist master